This article argues that the general practice of describing interrater reliability as a single, unified concept is at best imprecise, and at worst potentially misleading. Rather than representing a single concept, different statistical methods for computing interrater reliability can be more accurately classified into one of three categories based upon the underlying goals of analysis. The thre...

In this chapter, we will introduce the basic concepts that constitute what is known as ReliabilityCentered Maintenance. Initially, however, we will briefly discuss how PM has evolved in the industrial world, and most importantly, we will look at how one of the basic tenets of reliability engineering—the “bathtub curve”—can and should influence the formulation of PM tasks. Next, we will look at ...

[Purpose] This study examined the reliability of a clinical ability evaluation table developed in a previous study with the aim of clarifying the abilities necessary for therapists to independently implement their duties. [Subjects and Methods] Forty-eight physical therapists with less than 2 years of clinical experience were targeted for evaluation, 48 main supervisors, and 48 sub-supervisors,...

Although considered as not safety critical (safety function being performed by other sub-systems), railway supervision systems can contribute to hazardous scenarios. It is of primary importance to identify this type of scenarios and evaluate the behaviour of human operators. A state of the art in human reliability is presented. This article presents an experimental protocol based on an automati...

Surveys suggest that supply chain risk is a growing issue for executives and that supplier reliability is of particular concern. A common mitigation strategy observed in practice is for the buying firm to expend effort improving the reliability of its supply base. We explore a model in which a firm can source from multiple suppliers and/or exert effort to improve supplier reliability. For both ...

The aim of this study was to examine the interrater reliability (trained vs. untrained raters) and criterion-related validity (manual vs. automatic timing) of the 4 × 10-m shuttle run and 30-m running speed tests (times measured). The study comprised 85 adolescents (38 girls) aged 13.0-16.9 years from the Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence study. The time required to comple...

A plethora of software reliability models have been developed over the years but, in spite of extravagant claims for their efficacy, none can be trusted to give accurate results in all circumstances. This presents potential users with a serious difficulty, and has probably been the main reason why there has been such a poor take-up of these techniques. Recent work in CSR has largely overcome th...

This article is a continuation of the previous module on designing questionnaires and clinical record form in which we have discussed some basic points about designing the questionnaire and clinical record forms. In this section, we will discuss the reliability and validity of questionnaires. The different types of validity are face validity, content validity, criterion validity, and construct ...