Agreement among raters is of great importance in many domains. Divided into five sections, this text describes methods of analysis of agreement data that come in the usual agreement table or in the form of raw data. Part I introduces readers to coefficients of rater agreement and discusses their characteristics. Part II describes a family of log-linear models that allow one to test specific hypotheses about the agreement table, including hypotheses of general agreement and those about trends in raters' judgments. The next two sections present methods for the exploration of rater agreement and...

Agreement among raters is of great importance in many domains. For example, in medicine, diagnoses are often provided by more than one doctor to make sure the proposed treatment is optimal. In criminal trials, sentencing depends, among other things, on the complete agreement among the jurors. In observational studies, researchers increase reliability by examining discrepant ratings. This book is intended to help researchers statistically examine rater agreement by reviewing four different approaches to the technique.

The first approach introduces readers to calculating coefficients that...