A cluster of five self selected cytodiagnostic laboratories circulated 70 cervical/vaginal smears and 50 sputum smears in a series of five week cycles. Histological sections related to the abnormal smears were also circulated. Proportions of agreement and disagreement were analysed for cervical and sputum smear reports against the original report (and by implication against the consensus); corr...

AIMS To assess the consistency of histopathological diagnosis of pleural malignant mesothelioma by estimating interobserver agreement between five pathologists. METHODS Eighty eight histological sets pertaining to original diagnoses of pleural malignant mesothelioma were reviewed separately by each pathologist. Diagnostic likelihood was graded as definite (A), probable (B), possible (C), impr...

BACKGROUND Peer review is the mainstay of editorial decision making for medical journals. There is a dearth of evaluations of journal peer review with regard to reliability and validity, particularly in the light of the wide variety of medical journals. Studies carried out so far indicate low agreement among reviewers. We present an analysis of the peer review process at a general medical journ...

Fuzzy kappa for the agreement measure of fuzzy classifications Weibei Dou , Yuan Ren, Qian Wu, Su Ruan, Yanping Chen, Daniel Bloyet, JeanMarc Constans Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, China GREYC-CNRS UMR 6072, 6 Boulevard Maréchal Juin, 14050 Caen, France cCReSTIC, 9 Rue de Qubec,10026 Troyes, France Imaging Diagnostic Center, Nanfang Hospital Guangzho...

Abstract: Medical data and biomedical studies are often imbalanced with a majority of observations coming from healthy or normal subjects. In the presence of such imbalances, agreement among multiple raters based on Fleiss’ Kappa (FK) produces counterintuitive results. Simulations suggest that the degree of FK’s misrepresentation of the observed agreement may be directly related to the degree o...

Currently, computational linguists and cognitive scientists working in the area of discourse and dialogue argue that their subjective judgments are reliable using several different statistics, none of which are easily interpretable or comparable to each other. Meanwhile, researchers in content analysis have already experienced the same difficulties and come up with a solution in the kappa stati...

The eight-point extended Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOSE) is commonly used as the primary outcome measure in traumatic brain injury (TBI) clinical trials. The outcome is conventionally collected through a structured interview with the patient alone or together with a caretaker. Despite the fact that using the structured interview questionnaires helps reach agreement in GOSE assessment between rater...

I magine that you're a busy family physician and that you've found a rare free moment to scan the recent literature. Reviewing your preferred digest of abstracts, you notice a study comparing emergency physicians' interpretation of chest radiographs with radiologists' interpretations. 1 The article catches your eye because you have frequently found that your own reading of a radiograph differs ...

BACKGROUND Six classification systems have been proposed for describing rotator cuff tears designed to help understand their natural history and make treatment decisions. PURPOSE To assess the interobserver variation for these classification systems and identify the method with the best interobserver agreement. STUDY DESIGN Cohort study (diagnosis); Level of evidence, 2. METHODS Six rotat...

The aim of this study was to assess interobserver agreement of ultrasound parameters for portal hypertension in hepatosplenic mansonic schistosomiasis. Spleen size, diameter of the portal, splenic and superior mesenteric veins and presence of thrombosis and cavernous transformation were determined by three radiologists in blinded and independent fashion in 30 patients. Interobserver agreement w...