Matters arising: methodological issues on evaluating agreement between medical students’ attitudes towards drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy by Cohen’s kappa analysis

BMC Medical Education

Correspondence

Ming Li¹  Lei Yang²  Wei Sha³  Tianfei Yu³  Shuli Shao³  Xinjie Jiang³ 

[1] College of Computer and Control Engineering, Qiqihar University, 161006, Qiqihar, China;College of Foreign Languages, Qiqihar University, 161006, Qiqihar, China;College of Life Science and Agriculture Forestry, Qiqihar University, 161006, Qiqihar, China;

关键词: Substance use;    Pregnancy;    Medical students;    Attitudes;    Agreement;    Cohen’s kappa;    Weighted kappa;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12909-023-04071-0

 received in 2022-08-04, accepted in 2023-01-30,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe purpose of this article is to discuss the statistical methods for agreement analysis used in Richelle’s article (BMC Med Educ 22:335, 2022). The authors investigated the attitudes of final-year medical students regarding substance use during pregnancy and identified the factors that influence these attitudes.MethodsWe found that Cohen’s kappa value for measuring the agreement between these medical students’ attitudes towards drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy was questionable. In addition, we recommend using weighted kappa instead of Cohen’s kappa for agreement analysis at the presence of three categories.ResultsThe agreement improved from “good” (Cohen’s kappa) to “very good” (weighted kappa) for medical students’ attitudes towards drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy.ConclusionTo conclude, we recognize that this does not significantly alter the conclusions of the Richelle et al. paper, but it is necessary to ensure that the appropriate statistical tools are used.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023