Reliability and Validity in Measurement

Flashcards defining key terms related to reliability and validity in clinical measurement.

Reliability

The extent to which a measurement is free from error; a reliable measure gives the same answer when measuring the same construct several times.

Intrarater Reliability

The extent to which the same rater gets the same score when taking the measure on one patient on several occasions.

Interrater Reliability

The extent to which different raters get the same score when using the same measure on a single person.

Validity

The extent to which the score on a measure truly reflects the construct it is supposed to measure.

Construct Validity

Assessing the validity of a measure, ideally able to compare their measure to a 'gold standard'.

Reference Standard

An imperfect gold standard used when there is no gold standard to test validity.

Dichotomous Measures

Measures with two categories (e.g., kappa, sensitivity/specificity).

Continuous Measures

Measures that can take on any value within a range (e.g., intraclass correlation coefficients, correlations, limits of agreement, R2).