title: Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Project number 147: level of examiner reliability over seven years.
abstract: In 1980 the Veterans Administration Cooperative Studies Program No. 147 initiated a multicenter, multidisciplinary clinical study to evaluate the use of alternative alloys for porcelain-fused-to-metal restorations. An investigation of interexaminer agreement was conducted after seven years utilizing three measures of reliability: percentage of exact agreement using a five-point scale, percentage of agreement using a dichotomous (satisfactory-unsatisfactory) scale, and [kappa], a statistic which is intended to measure agreement beyond what would be expected to occur by chance. Exact agreement on the five-point scale ranged from 77 to 99 percent. Percent agreement on the dichotomous scale was above 99 percent for all of the criteria. Kappa ranged from 0.56 to 0.91, indicating moderate to near perfect agreement among examiners. Reliability of the study evaluations reinforced the validity and significance of the findings.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Research Center for Restorative Materials, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ann Arbor, MI 48105.
authors.forename: H F
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D003722:Dental Alloys; D015921:Dental Implants; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D015337:Multicenter Studies as Topic / Q000592:standards; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D003722:Dental Alloys; D015921:Dental Implants