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.

Presents statistical methodologies for analyzing common types of data from method comparison experiments and illustrates their applications through detailed case studies Measuring Agreement: Models, Methods, and Applications features statistical evaluation of agreement between two or more methods of measurement of a variable with a primary focus on continuous data. The authors view the analysis of method comparison data as a two-step procedure where an adequate model for the data is found, and then inferential techniques are applied for appropriate functions of parameters of the model. The presentation is accessible to a wide audience and provides the necessary technical details and references. In addition, the authors present chapter-length explorations of data from paired measurements designs, repeated measurements designs, and multiple methods; data with covariates; and heteroscedastic, longitudinal, and categorical data. The book also: • Strikes a balance between theory and applications • Presents parametric as well as nonparametric methodologies • Provides a concise introduction to Cohen’s kappa coefficient and other measures of agreement for binary and categorical data • Discusses sample size determination for trials on measuring agreement • Contains real-world case studies and exercises throughout • Provides a supplemental website containing the related datasets and R code Measuring Agreement: Models, Methods, and Applications is a resource for statisticians and biostatisticians engaged in data analysis, consultancy, and methodological research. It is a reference for clinical chemists, ecologists, and biomedical and other scientists who deal with development and validation of measurement methods. This book can also serve as a graduate-level text for students in statistics and biostatistics.

The third edition of this book was very well received by researchers working in many different fields of research. The use of that text also gave these researchers the opportunity to raise questions, and express additional needs for materials on techniques poorly covered in the literature. For example, when designing an inter-rater reliability study, many researchers wanted to know how to determine the optimal number of raters and the optimal number of subjects that should participate in the experiment. Also, very little space in the literature has been devoted to the notion of intra-rater reliability, particularly for quantitative measurements. The fourth edition of this text addresses those needs, in addition to further refining the presentation of the material already covered in the third edition. Features of the Fourth Edition include: New material on sample size calculations for chance-corrected agreement coefficients, as well as for intraclass correlation coefficients. The researcher will be able to determine the optimal number raters, subjects, and trials per subject.The chapter entitled “Benchmarking Inter-Rater Reliability Coefficients” has been entirely rewritten.The introductory chapter has been substantially expanded to explore possible definitions of the notion of inter-rater reliability.All chapters have been revised to a large extent to improve their readability.

S. Panchapakesan has made significant contributions to ranking and selection and has published in many other areas of statistics, including order statistics, reliability theory, stochastic inequalities, and inference. Written in his honor, the twenty invited articles in this volume reflect recent advances in these areas and form a tribute to Panchapakesan’s influence and impact on these areas. Featuring theory, methods, applications, and extensive bibliographies with special emphasis on recent literature, this comprehensive reference work will serve researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in the statistical and applied mathematics communities.

This book contains selected papers from a workshop on modern statistical methods in toxicology held during the EUROTOX '90 conference in Leipzig. The papers deal with the biostatistical evaluation of the commonly used toxicological assays, i.e. mutagenicity, long-term carcinogenicity, embryotoxicity and chronic toxicity assays. The biological background is considered in detail, and most of the related statistical approaches described. In five overview papers, the present state of the art of the related topics is given, while in several contributed papers new approaches are discussed. The most important features are: - A new view on the per-litter analysis problem in em- bryotoxicity assays. - A highly sophisticated treatment of the so-called muta-tox problem in mutagenicity assays. - A detailed discussion of the multiplicity problem based on the closed testing procedure. This volume provides readers with an overview of modern biostatistical methods for several toxicological assays and is in part intended for direct, practical use.

Explains the concepts and practical methods of behavioural science in clear, concise terms: vital for understanding humans, animals and AIs.

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Researching and manufacturing fighters, ships, and tanks are only part of the picture for defense contracts. Contracting for services accounts for over 41 percent of DoD contract obligations in 2018. Services include maintaining equipment, moving people and things, creating software, providing server space, and construction. Service contracting is challenging as services can be difficult to define and measure. But services are increasingly central to the U.S. economy. The Department of Defense seeks to attract new firms that will increase its speed and agility—many of these firms are service providers, e.g., data analytics or cloud computing. CSIS looked at a million contracts to evaluate how three factors influence performance: 1.service complexity 2.contract-management capacity 3.vendor’s history working with a DoD contracting office The existing data fails to explain large differences in contract office performance. More DoD transparency about contracting office capacity could help make a case for further investments. The report also found that when vendors and contracting offices have a longer history, they tend to have better results. That means DoD needs to think not only about recruiting new partners, but also about helping them succeed.

Worldwide economic constraints on health care systems have highlighted the importance of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based health policy. The resulting clinical trials and health services research studies require instruments to monitor the outcomes of care and the output of the health system. However, the over-abundance of competing measurement scales can make choosing a measure difficult at best. Measuring Health provides in-depth reviews of over 100 of the leading health measurement tools and serves as a guide for choosing among them.LNow in its third edition, this book provides a critical overview of the field of health measurement, with a technical introduction and discussion of the history and future directions for the field. This latest edition updates the information on each of the measures previously reviewed, and includes a complete new chapter on anxiety measurement to accompany the one on depression. It has also added new instruments to those previously reviewed in each of the chapters in the book.LChapters cover measurements of physical disability, social health, psychological well-being, anxiety, depression, mental status testing, pain, general health status and quality of life. Each chapter presents a tabular comparison of the quality of the instruments reviewed, followed by a detailed description of each method, covering its purpose and conceptual basis, its reliability and validity and, where possible, shows a copy of the actual scale. To ensure accuracy of the information, each review has been approved by the original author of each instrument or by an acknowledged expert.