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Black English

a vernacular of English used by the African American speech community. Its formal and sociolinguistic properties have been the subject of intensive linguistic scholarship, notably by U.S. linguist William Labov (1927–  ). Also called African American Vernacular English (AAVE); Black English Vernacular (BEV); Ebonics.

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Psychology term of the day

March 13th 2025

alpha

alpha

(symbol: α) n.

1. the likelihood of incorrectly rejecting a statement or hypothesis concerning a characteristic of a population. More specifically, it is the probability of incorrectly rejecting a true null hypothesis (i.e., committing a Type I error) in research. Although the value of alpha is chosen by the investigator based on what is deemed acceptable for a particular study, alpha values of .05 and .01 are commonly used.

2. a measure of reliability for a set of responses to a test or measure. See Cronbach’s alpha.