Which statement about reliability is accurate?

• A. Reliability refers to whether a test measures what it intends to measure.
• B. Reliability is about consistency of results.
• C. Reliability and validity are the same.
• D. Reliability determines the difficulty of items.

Answer: (B)

Reliability is about the consistency of results. A reliable assessment yields similar scores when conditions are kept stable—whether the same child takes it again, different teachers score an observation similarly, or the items on a test consistently measure the same skill. Evidence of reliability shows up as stable scores over time (test-retest), strong agreement among scorers (inter-rater), or high internal consistency among items (like Cronbach’s alpha).

This is different from validity, which asks whether the test actually measures what it’s intended to measure. They’re related concepts but not the same. Item difficulty pertains to how hard the questions are and doesn’t define reliability; a test can be reliable even if items are easy or hard, as long as the scoring is consistent.