Statistical Tools for Measuring Agreement

Agreement assessment techniques are widely used in examining the acceptability of a new or generic process, methodology and/or formulation in areas of lab performance, instrument/assay validation or method comparisons, statistical process control, goodness-of-fit, and individual bioequivalence. Successful applications in these situations require a sound understanding of both the underlying theory and methodological advances in handling real-life problems. This book seeks to effectively blend theory and applications while presenting readers with many practical examples. For instance, in the medical device environment, it is important to know if the newly established lab can reproduce the instrument/assay results from the established but outdating lab. When there is a disagreement, it is important to differentiate the sources of disagreement. In addition to agreement coefficients, accuracy and precision coefficients are introduced and utilized to characterize these sources. This book will appeal to a broad range of statisticians, researchers, practitioners and students, in areas of biomedical devices, psychology, medical research, and others, in which agreement assessment are needed. Many practical illustrative examples will be presented throughout the book in a wide variety of situations for continuous and categorical data.