McDonald’s omega outperforms Cronbach’s alpha by allowing loadings to vary.

Evidence

Next, the reliability of the indexes was assessed using McDonald’s omega estimate, as this test allows loadings and residual variances to vary, unlike the Cronbach’s alpha test, which is based on the assumption that all loadings are equal to each other (Dunn et al., 2014). — Naheed Ahmed, Measurement of Perceived Interpersonal…, 45

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to any prior work the reader has on scale reliability or questionnaire design, where alpha is the default and rarely interrogated.