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Agreement and Alignment in Binary Rating Tasks: Strategic Convergence as an Equilibrium Outcome.
1Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy.
Educational and Psychological Measurement
|June 29, 2026
Summary
Raters
Area of Science:
- Decision analysis
- Psychometrics
- Behavioral economics
Background:
- Rater agreement metrics like Cohen's kappa (κ) don't explain *how* agreement is achieved.
- Agreement can stem from similar decision thresholds or favorable marginal conditions.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate if rater decision threshold convergence is externally imposed or arises from strategic adjustment.
- Model endogenous emergence of threshold convergence.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an equal-variance signal-detection framework.
- Modeled raters strategically adjusting thresholds to balance accuracy and panel alignment.
- Employed Nash best-response updating to find equilibrium thresholds.
- Analyzed threshold variance, Strategic Convergence Index (SCI), and Cohen's κ under varying alignment pressure and prevalence.
Main Results:
- Increased alignment pressure sharply reduced threshold dispersion and drove SCI towards 1.
- Cohen's κ increased only slightly with alignment pressure.
- SCI was robust to prevalence changes, while κ varied significantly.
- Threshold convergence can emerge endogenously through strategic interaction.
Conclusions:
- Strategic interaction can lead to endogenous convergence of decision thresholds.
- SCI captures latent decision structure convergence, distinct from observable agreement.
- Cohen's κ reflects realized classifications, sensitive to marginal conditions.
- SCI offers a model-based measure of alignment not fully captured by κ.
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