IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/amstat/v70y2016i4p373-384.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Robust Are Multirater Interrater Reliability Indices to Changes in Frequency Distribution?

Author

Listed:
  • David Quarfoot
  • Richard A. Levine

Abstract

Interrater reliability studies are used in a diverse set of fields. Often, these investigations involve three or more raters, and thus, require the use of indices such as Fleiss’s kappa, Conger’s kappa, or Krippendorff’s alpha. Through two motivating examples—one theoretical and one from practice—this article exposes limitations of these indices when the units to be rated are not well-distributed across the rating categories. Then, using a Monte Carlo simulation and information visualizations, we argue for the use of two alternative indices, the Brennan–Prediger coefficient and Gwet’s AC2, because the agreement levels reported by these indices are more robust to variation in the distribution of units that raters encounter. The article concludes by exploring the complex, interwoven relationship between the number of levels in a rating instrument, the agreement level present among raters, and the distribution of units that are to be scored. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Suggested Citation

  • David Quarfoot & Richard A. Levine, 2016. "How Robust Are Multirater Interrater Reliability Indices to Changes in Frequency Distribution?," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(4), pages 373-384, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:amstat:v:70:y:2016:i:4:p:373-384
    DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2016.1141708
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00031305.2016.1141708
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00031305.2016.1141708?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Balgah, Roland Azibo & Benjamin, Emmanuel Olatunbosun & Kimengsi, Jude Ndzifon & Buchenrieder, Gertrud, 2023. "COVID-19 impact on agriculture and food security in Africa. A systematic review and meta-analysis," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    2. Miriam Steiner, 2020. "Soft Presentation of Hard News? A Content Analysis of Political Facebook Posts," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 244-257.
    3. Lisa Mertens & Kristine De Martelaer & Arja Sääkslahti & Eva D’Hondt, 2021. "The Inter-Rater and Intra-Rater Reliability of the Actual Aquatic Skills Test (AAST) for Assessing Young Children’s Motor Competence in the Water," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-22, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:amstat:v:70:y:2016:i:4:p:373-384. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/UTAS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.