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Reliability of a Longitudinal Sequence of Scale Ratings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Annouschka Laenen ,
Ariel Alonso ,
Geert Molenberghs  and
Tony Vangeneugden
Annouschka Laenen*
Affiliation:
Hasselt University
Ariel Alonso
Affiliation:
Hasselt University
Geert Molenberghs
Affiliation:
Hasselt University
Tony Vangeneugden
Affiliation:
Tibotec, Johnson & Johnson
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Annouschka Laenen, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium. E-mail: annouschka.laenen@uhasselt.be
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Abstract

Reliability captures the influence of error on a measurement and, in the classical setting, is defined as one minus the ratio of the error variance to the total variance. Laenen, Alonso, and Molenberghs (Psychometrika 73:443–448, 2007) proposed an axiomatic definition of reliability and introduced the RT coefficient, a measure of reliability extending the classical approach to a more general longitudinal scenario. The RT coefficient can be interpreted as the average reliability over different time points and can also be calculated for each time point separately. In this paper, we introduce a new and complementary measure, the so-called RΛ, which implies a new way of thinking about reliability. In a longitudinal context, each measurement brings additional knowledge and leads to more reliable information. The RΛ captures this intuitive idea and expresses the reliability of the entire longitudinal sequence, in contrast to an average or occasion-specific measure. We study the measure’s properties using both theoretical arguments and simulations, establish its connections with previous proposals, and elucidate its performance in a real case study.

Keywords

reliabilitylinear mixed modellongitudinal datapsychiatryrating scale
Type
Theory and Methods
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 49 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

The authors are grateful to J&J PRD for kind permission to use their data. We gratefully acknowledge support from Belgian IUAP/PAI network “Statistical Techniques and Modeling for Complex Substantive Questions with Complex Data.”

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