BACKGROUND Originally a binary classifier, Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) has proven to be a useful tool for classification of the prevalence of Schistosoma mansoni into multiple categories (≤10%, >10 and <50%, ≥50%), and semi-curtailed sampling has been shown to effectively reduce the number of observations needed to reach a decision. To date the statistical underpinnings for Multiple C...

PURPOSE This article examines and illustrates the use and interpretation of the kappa statistic in musculoskeletal research. SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS The reliability of clinicians' ratings is an important consideration in areas such as diagnosis and the interpretation of examination findings. Often, these ratings lie on a nominal or an ordinal scale. For such data, the kappa coefficient is an ap...

BACKGROUND We evaluated the concordance between triage scores generated by a novel Internet clinical decision support tool, Clinical GPS (cGPS) (Lumiata Inc, San Mateo, CA), and the Emergency Severity Index (ESI), a well-established and clinically validated patient severity scale in use today. Although the ESI and cGPS use different underlying algorithms to calculate patient severity, both util...

Background: Verbal Autopsy Questionnaire (VA) is an important tool to estimate the cause of death among those populations lacking an appropriate death registration system. In this study, the validity and reliability of verbal autopsy were assessed. &nbsp;&nbsp; Methods: The Persian version of the questionnaire was prepared using the translation and back- translation method. In the first and se...

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...

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY The extent to which variability affects endoscopic grading of arytenoid cartilage movement is uncertain. OBJECTIVE To determine the observer and within horse variability of grading arytenoid cartilage movement in horses during resting endoscopic examination, using a 7-grade system. METHODS Endoscopic recordings of the upper respiratory tract made at rest in 270 ...

BACKGROUND National surveillance for chemical incidents is being developed in the UK. It is important to improve the quality of information collected, standardise techniques, and train personnel. OBJECTIVE To define the extent to which eight National Poison Information Service specialists in poison information agree on the classification of calls received as "chemical incidents" based on the ...

BACKGROUND: Radial head fractures are common injuries, and there is little information on the reliability of classification systems for such injuries. The purpose of our study was to report the interobserver reliability of 2 commonly used classification systems: the Hotchkiss modification of the Mason classification and the AO classification systems. METHODS: We compiled the radiographs from a ...

The American Thoracic Society has recently recommended the use of NHANES III spirometric reference standard in the United States. The objective of this study was to better quantify the well-known 'problem' of the change in interpretation of spirometry, as a consequence of the change from the other commonly used reference standards (Morris, Kory, Crapo, Knudson 1976, and Knudson 1983) to NHANES ...

Weighted kappa is a widely used statistic for summarizing inter-rater agreement on a categorical scale. For rating scales with three categories, there are seven versions of weighted kappa. It is shown analytically how these weighted kappas are related. Several conditional equalities and inequalities between the weighted kappas are derived.The analytical analysis indicates that the weighted kapp...