Journal of clinical epidemiology
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Studies measuring interobserver agreement (reliability) are common in clinical practice, yet discussion of appropriate sample size estimation techniques is minimal as compared with clinical trials. The authors propose a sample size estimation technique to achieve a prespecified lower and upper limit for a confidence interval for the κ coefficient in studies of interobserver agreement. ⋯ This method should be useful in the planning stages of an interobserver agreement study in which the investigator would like to obtain a prespecified level of precision in the estimation of κ. An R software package (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria), kappaSize is also provided that implements this method.
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A new strategy to manage conflicts of interests (COIs) of a clinical guideline's panelists gives primary responsibility to a methodologist, puts equal emphasis on intellectual and financial COIs, and excludes panelists with primary conflicts from drafting or voting on recommendations. We explored the views of the methodologists and content experts regarding the new strategy. ⋯ The methodologists and lead content experts were uneasy regarding their counterpart's role. They disagreed about the potential effect of the new strategy on the quality of the guideline.