Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 17, 2026

Assessing the Accuracy of Fitness Smartwatch Data for Cardiovascular and Physical Activity Monitoring: A Validation Study in Digital Health
Published on: February 21, 2025
Measuring agreement between healthcare survey instruments using mutual information
Yuncheol Kang1, Melinda R Steis2, Ann M Kolanowski3
1Department of Industrial Engineering, Hongik University, Seoul, 04066, Republic of Korea. yckang@hongik.ac.kr.
Background:
Healthcare researchers often use multiple healthcare survey instruments to examine a particular patient symptom. The use of multiple instruments can pose some interesting research questions, such as whether the outcomes produced by the different instruments are in agreement. We tackle this problem using information theory, focusing on mutual information to compare outcomes from multiple healthcare survey instruments.
Methods:
We review existing methods of measuring agreement/disagreement between the instruments and suggest a procedure that utilizes mutual information to quantitatively measure the amount of information shared by outcomes from multiple healthcare survey instruments. We also include worked examples to explain the approach.
Results:
As a case study, we employ the suggested procedure to analyze multiple healthcare survey instruments used for detecting delirium superimposed on dementia (DSD) in community-dwelling older adults. In addition, several examples are used to assess the mutual information technique in comparison with other measures, such as odds ratio and Cohen's kappa.
Conclusions:
Analysis of mutual information can be useful in explaining agreement/disagreement between multiple instruments. The suggested approach provides new insights into and potential improvements for the application of healthcare survey instruments.
More Related Videos
09:23Quantification of Information Encoded by Gene Expression Levels During Lifespan Modulation Under Broad-range Dietary Restriction in C. elegans
Published on: August 16, 2017
04:47Measuring Transcellular Interactions through Protein Aggregation in a Heterologous Cell System
Published on: May 22, 2020
Related Concept Videos
Health Information Technology and Healthcare Information System
Health Information Technology, commonly called HIT, integrates advanced information systems and technology in healthcare settings. Its primary functions include:
Statistical Analysis: Overview
One of the most commonly used statistical quantifiers is the mean, which is the ratio between the sum of the numerical values of all results and the...
Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance
Variability: Analysis
The range is a simple measure of variability, indicating the difference between the highest and...
Multiple Comparison Tests
It would be easy to compare two samples using a significance alpha level of 0.05. In other words, there is only one sample pair to be compared. However, it would be difficult to identify a significantly different sample if the number...
Uncertainty in Measurement: Reading Instruments