Journal Club: The Measurement of Reliability - 14/09/13
Résumé |
Editor's Capsule Summary for Cruz et al |
What is already known on this topic |
Valid clinical research requires high-quality data collection. Physicians are commonly considered the standard by which valid prospective data are obtained.
What question this study addressed |
This study determined whether non–medically trained research assistants could reliably collect subjective historical data from emergency department patients with chest pain.
What this study adds to our knowledge |
This prospective comparative study included 33 research assistants, 39 physicians, and 143 patients. Research assistants demonstrated fair to excellent reliability (as defined by crude agreement and kappa) when obtaining cardiac histories and cardiac risk factors.
How this might change clinical practice |
The results of this study will not change clinical practice. They do, however, provide evidence to support the use of trained research assistants for the collection of certain types of clinical data.
Le texte complet de cet article est disponible en PDF.Plan
| Section editors: Tyler W. Barrett, MD; David L. Schriger, MD, MPH |
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| SEE RELATED ARTICLE, P. 1. |
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| Editor's Note: This 10th installment of Annals of Emergency Medicine Journal club departs slightly from previous installments by focusing on a single methodological issue, the measurement of reliability. We use this issue's Cruz et al article as a jumping-off point for our discussion. This bimonthly feature seeks to improve the critical appraisal skills of emergency physicians and other interested readers through a guided critique of actual Annals of Emergency Medicine articles. Each Journal Club will pose questions that encourage readers—be they clinicians, academics, residents, or medical students—to critically appraise the literature. During a 2- to 3-year cycle, we plan to ask questions that cover the main topics in research methodology and critical appraisal of the literature. To do this, we will select articles that use a variety of study designs and analytic techniques. These may or may not be the most clinically important articles in a specific issue, but they are articles that serve the mission of covering the clinical epidemiology curriculum. Journal Club entries are published in 2 phases. In the first phase, a list of questions about the article is published in the issue in which the article appears. Questions are rated “novice,” ( It is our hope that the Journal Club will broaden Annals of Emergency Medicine's appeal to residents and medical students. We are interested in receiving feedback about this feature. Please e-mail journalclub@acep.org with your comments. |
Vol 54 - N° 1
P. 9-11 - juillet 2009 Retour au numéro
Article précédent
- Spider Bite
- Jeffrey R. Suchard
- The Limited Utility of Routine Cardiac Stress Testing in Emergency Department Chest Pain Patients Younger Than 40 Years
- Luke K. Hermann, Scott D. Weingart, W. Lane Duvall, Milena J. Henzlova
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