A quantitative screening method to detect rater-introduced bias in clinical ratings

摘要

BackgroundWe suggest a ‘screening test’ to examine large data files with clinical ratings for the occurrence of rater-introduced bias prior to using the data for quantitative analyses. The test is based on a statistical model in which a well-standardized interval-scale outcome (for example, milk yield) is related to clinical ratings (for example, body condition scores) obtained from multiple contexts (for example, dairy herds).