STUDY ON INTEROBSERVER AGREEMENT IN A GOITRE PREVALENCE SURVEY

Observers differ in their judgment while assessing physical signs in a patient. We had undertaken a goitre prevalence survey amongst school students in a Rural Health Training Centre, Pune district (Maharashtra) during October 1992. Four teams of trained observers were used for detection of goitre. This study was undertaken to estimate the extent and acceptability of interobserver agreement amongst the four teams. Observer variation/agreement was measured by two methods viz. kappa coefficient and proportion of agreement. The proportion of agreement appears to be a better measure of observer agreement as it could make a distinction between normality (absence of goitre) and abnormality (presence of goitre). In the present study, the proportion of agreement for abnormality ranged between 0.62 - 0.83. This measure was considered as indicating a good interobserver agreement in detecting goitre in the survey that was undertaken.