We tried to develop itemized evaluation criteria and a clinical rater qualification system through rating training of inter-rater consistency for experienced clinical dental hygienists and dental hygiene clinical educators. A total of 15 clinical dental hygienists with 1-year careers participated as clinical examination candidates, while 5 dental hygienists with 3-year educations and clinical c...

Writing assessments often make use of analytic rating scales to describe the criteria for different performance levels. However, the use of such rating scales requires a level of interpretation by raters and if several raters are involved, the reliability of examinee scores can be significantly affected (Engelhard, 1992; McNamara 1996). Variability between raters is partly managed by rater trai...

OBJECTIVE The Japanese translation of the Berg balance scale (BBS) has previously been published; however, its reliability has not yet been validated. This study aimed to evaluate its reliability. METHODS Patients took the BBS test three times; two neurologists monitored the results. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and Cronbach's alpha (α) coefficients were calculated, and the ...

Sweating threshold temperature and sweating sensitivity responses are measured to evaluate thermoregulatory control. However, analytic approaches vary, and no standardized methodology has been validated. This study validated a simple and standardized method, segmented linear regression (SReg), for determination of sweating threshold temperature and sensitivity. Archived data were extracted for ...

BACKGROUND To assess the intra- and inter-rater agreement of chart abstractors from multiple sites involved in the evaluation of an Asthma Care Program (ACP). METHODS For intra-rater agreement, 110 charts randomly selected from 1,433 patients enrolled in the ACP across eight Ontario communities were re-abstracted by 10 abstractors. For inter-rater agreement, data abstractors reviewed a set of...

This study addresses the high stakes nature of teacher performance assessments and consequential outcomes of passing versus failing based on decisions of those who subjectively score them. Specifically, this study examines the inter-rater reliability of an emerging national model, the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). Current reports on the inter-rater reliability of PACT u...

BACKGROUND Current surgical treatment for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) involves correction in both the coronal and sagittal plane, and thorough assessment of these parameters is essential for evaluation of surgical results. However, various definitions of thoracic kyphosis (TK) have been proposed, and the intra- and inter-rater reproducibility of these measures has not been determined....

The aim of the current study is to assess the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of real time ultrasound scanning in measuring static humeral head position. Real time ultrasound scanning, an experimental clinical measurement, was used to record measurements of the humeral head position in a sample of (20) healthy volunteers [9 male, 11 female]. While the participant was seated in a standar...

To facilitate a more widespread use of volumetric tumor segmentation in clinical studies, there is an urgent need for reliable, user-friendly segmentation software. The aim of this study was therefore to compare three different software packages for semi-automatic brain tumor segmentation of glioblastoma; namely BrainVoyagerTM QX, ITK-Snap and 3D Slicer, and to make data available for future re...

BACKGROUND The Pediatric Balance Scale (PBS) was developed from a modified version of the Berg Balance Scale aiming to obtain a balance scale more appropriate for the child population. OBJECTIVES To adapt the PBS into Brazilian-Portuguese and to evaluate the intra and inter-rater reliability of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of PBS. METHODS To perform the cross-cultural adaptation of the ...