CAN THERE BE “TOO MUCH” INTERNAL CONSISTENCY IN A SCALE?
REJOINDER TO BOYLE J.J. Ray University of N.S.W., Australia Abstract Boyle has disinterred Cattell’s concern over “bloated specifics” and used it to condemn all scales that have high internal consistencies. It is shown that his argument depends on an unwarranted belief that “breadth of coverage” is a uniformly desirable attribute of a scale. Although not titled as such, Boyle’s (1991) paper is essentially a reply to some criticisms I made (Ray, 1988) of earlier claims by him to the effect that attitude and personality scales can have “too much” internal consistency. It seems appropriate, therefore, for me to offer some rejoinder to Boyle’s (1991) arguments. Essentially, what Boyle is relying on is the old Cattellian fear of “bloated specifics”: i.e. if you put into a factor analysis a set of items which includes a sub-set of items that are all essentially re-phrasings of one-another, you will undoubtedly get out a factor featuring the set of “re-phrased” items. Cattell (1978) regards s
