Cross-national and multi-professional inter-rater reliability of the Housing Enabler

In order to render reliable assessment of housing accessibility in a cross-national context possible, the objective of this study was to investigate multi-professional, cross-national inter-rater reliability of the ENABLE-AGE project-specific version of the Housing Enabler instrument. The data collection was performed with elderly persons in ordinary housing in five European countries. After participation in rater training courses, 26 raters representing different nationalities and professions performed data collection in independent pairs of raters, n = 64. Inter-rater reliability was calculated by means of percentage agreement as well as Cohen's kappa. The results demonstrated moderate to good overall inter-rater reliability of the project-specific version of the Housing Enabler instrument. The mean agreement for the personal component part of the instrument was 91%. For 13 of the 15 items in this part kappa values could be defined, kappa = 0.43, indicating moderate agreement. In the environmental component part the mean agreement for all 188 items was 85%, while kappa = 0.50, indicating moderate agreement. Given the complexity of the instrument and the number of different professions and countries involved, we consider the Housing Enabler as useful for cross-national research targeting housing accessibility, even if the agreement levels reached were moderate. However, the moderate agreement levels pinpoint the importance of rater training.