Information-based measure of disagreement for more than two observers: a useful tool to compare the degree of observer disagreement

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2013

Authors

Teresa Henriques (Author) Other; Luis Antunes (Author) FCUP; Joao Bernardes (Author) FMUP; Mara Matias (Author) Other; Diogo Sato (Author) Other; Cristina Costa Santos (Author) FMUP

Journal

Title: BMC Medical Research Methodology

Vol. 13

Final page: 47

ISSN: 1471-2288

Publisher: Springer Nature

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 16 Citations

Scopus - 15 Citations

Scientific classification

FOS: Medical and Health sciences > Health sciences

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-005-2EW

DOI: 10.1186/1471-2288-13-47

Abstract (EN): Background: Assessment of disagreement among multiple measurements for the same subject by different observers remains an important problem in medicine. Several measures have been applied to assess observer agreement. However, problems arise when comparing the degree of observer agreement among different methods, populations or circumstances. Methods: The recently introduced information-based measure of disagreement (IBMD) is a useful tool for comparing the degree of observer disagreement. Since the proposed IBMD assesses disagreement between two observers only, we generalized this measure to include more than two observers. Results: Two examples (one with real data and the other with hypothetical data) were employed to illustrate the utility of the proposed measure in comparing the degree of disagreement. Conclusion: The IBMD allows comparison of the disagreement in non-negative ratio scales across different populations and the generalization presents a solution to evaluate data with different number of observers for different cases, an important issue in real situations. A website for online calculation of IBMD and respective 95% confidence interval was additionally developed. The website is widely available to mathematicians, epidemiologists and physicians to facilitate easy application of this statistical strategy to their own data.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 6