Granted, this is probably more than you would ever want to know about reliability but better l provides you with too much information than too little. A couple of questions that you may have at this point are:1) what is considered a ‘good’ or adequate reliability value? And2) How do l improve the reliability of my survey instrument? With respect to the first question, obviously, the reliability value the more reliable the measure. The general convention in research has been prescribed by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994) who state that one should strive for reliability values of .70 or higher. Regarding the second question, reliability values increase as test length increases (see Gulliksen, 1950 for a complete discussion of the relationship between test length and reliability).that is, the more items you have in your scale to measure the construct of interest the more reliable your scale will become. However, the problem with simply increasing the number of scale items when performing applied research is that respondents are less likely to participate and answer completely when confronted with the prospect of replying to a lengthy questionnaire. Therefore, the best approach is to develop a scale that completely measures the construct of interest and yet does so in as parsimonious or economical a manner as is possible. A well-developed yet brief scale may lead to higher levels of respondent participation and comprehensiveness of responses so that one acquires a rich pool of data with which to answer their research question