Objectives: Evaluate intra-rater and inter-rater variabilities of the Sunnybrook Facial Grading System (SFGS) explore potential factors variability. Study Design: Prospective test hypothesis. Setting: University tertiary referral center. Participants/Methods: video recordings 20 patients with variable degrees peripheral facial palsy (PFP) were anonymized then presented to 31 independents raters...

INTRODUCTION Methods of perceptual voice evaluation have yet to achieve satisfactory consistency; complete acceptance of a recognised clinical protocol is still some way off. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three speech and language therapists rated the voices of 43 patients attending the problem asthma clinic of a teaching hospital, according to the grade-roughness-breathiness-asthenicity-strain (GRBA...

Objective To determine the level of agreement among experienced operators of candidacy for upper airway stimulation (UAS) based on evaluation of drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE). Methods The trial was designed as a single-blinded cross-sectional study. Four otolaryngologists with extensive DISE experience were given 63 video clips from the STAR trial video library. These videos were graded...

BACKGROUND Multiple mini-interviews (MMIs) are a valuable tool in medical school selection due to their broad acceptance and promising psychometric properties. With respect to the high expenses associated with this procedure, the discussion about its feasibility should be extended to cost-effectiveness issues. METHODS Following a pilot test of MMIs for medical school admission at Hamburg Univ...

Image labeling and parcellation are critical tasks for the assessment of volumetric and morphometric features in medical imaging data. The process of image labeling is inherently error prone as images are corrupted by noise and artifact. Even expert interpretations are subject to subjectivity and the precision of the individual raters. Hence, all labels must be considered imperfect with some de...

Introduction: To evaluate adaptation to strength training in clinical diagnostics and follow-up of Achilles Tendinopathy repeated sonographic measurements of the tendon diameter are regularly performed [1]. However, limited data on validity criteria, especially intra-rater variability of anteroposterior (a.p.) diameter of the Achilles tendon (AT) are available. It is unclear whether longitudina...

Raters play a central role in rater-mediated assessment, and rater variability manifested in various forms including rater errors contributes to construct-irrelevant variance which can adversely affect an examinee’s test score. Halo effect as a subcomponent of rater errors is one of the most pervasive errors which, if not detected, can result in obscuring an examinee’s score and threatening val...

BACKGROUND Ensuring that all medical students achieve adequate clinical skills remains a challenge, yet the correct performance of clinical skills is critical for all fields of medicine. This study analyzes the influence of receiving feedback by teaching associates in the context of achieving and maintaining a level of expertise in complex head and skull examination. METHODS All third year st...

The Brief Rating of Aggression by Children and Adolescents (BRACHA) is a 14-item instrument scored by emergency room staff members to assess aggression risk during an upcoming psychiatric hospitalization. In this study, we investigated the inter-rater reliability of the BRACHA 0.9, the latest version of the instrument. After receiving training based on the BRACHA 0.9 manual, 10 intake workers v...