The purpose of this study was to determine the intrarater and interrater reliability of a clinical evaluation system for scapular dysfunction. No commonly accepted terminology presently exists for describing the abnormal dynamic scapular movement patterns that are commonly associated with shoulder injury. A method of observation was devised for clinical evaluation of scapular dysfunction. Blind...

Kraft pulp and wood powder from Acacia spp. were selected for the development of rapid, minimally-destructive, and environmentally friendly predictions of kappa number and pulp yield, by means of near infrared reflectance (NIR) spectra. The models, based on Partial Least Squares Regression (PLS-R), were established with fifty-four calibration samples selected by Principle Component Analysis (PC...

OBJECTIVE Methods to evaluate food consumption still need improvement. A study was conducted to verify the reproducibility and validity of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) among overweight adults. METHODS The study was carried out in a private university in São Paulo, Brazil. The study sample consisted of 146 individuals of both sex with body mass index =25 kg/m2 and age between 18 and 60...

1. Clinical and experimental pharmacologists and physiologists often wish to compare two methods of measurement, or two measurers. 2. Biostatisticians insist that what should be sought is not agreement between methods or measurers, but disagreement or bias. 3. If measurements have been made on a continuous scale, the main choice is between the Altman-Bland method of differences and least produc...

BACKGROUND We aimed to validate three widely used scales in stroke research in a multiethnic Brazilian population. METHODS The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), modified Rankin Scale (mRS) and Barthel Index (BI) were translated, culturally adapted and applied by two independent investigators. The mRS was applied with or without a previously validated structured interview. In...

The objective of this study was to assess the degree of agreement between body mass index (BMI) and weight perception of Japanese office workers between the ages of 20 and 65. We sent 43,064 self-administered health-related questionnaires to all employees of a financial firm in Japan in October 2004. The questionnaire asked the respondents for their height, weight, and their weight perception. ...

This paper proposes a supervised classification scheme to identify 40 tree species (2 coniferous, 38 broadleaf) belonging to 22 families and 36 genera in high spatial resolution QuickBird multispectral images (HMS). Overall kappa coefficient (OKC) and species conditional kappa coefficients (SCKC) were used to evaluate classification performance in training samples and estimate accuracy and unce...

PURPOSE To develop and evaluate a scale for assessment of the methodological quality for clinical investigations of radiologic studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS A scale was developed that included methodological standards compiled from established sources for assessing the methodological quality of study designs in clinical research and characteristics related to biases commonly observed in clin...

Several papers have appeared criticizing the kappa coefficient because of its tendency to fluctuate with sample base rates. The importance of these criticisms is difficult to evaluate because they are presented with regards to a highly specific model of diagnostic decision making. In this article, diagnostic decision making is viewed as a special case of signal detection theory. Each diagnostic...