Confidence Intervals of Weighted Kappa Coefficient of a Binary Diagnostic Test

Abstract

Sensitivity and specificity are classic parameters to assess the performance of a binary diagnostic test. Another useful parameter to measure the performance of a binary test is the weighted kappa coefficient, which is a measure of the classificatory agreement between the binary test and the gold standard. Various confidence intervals are proposed for the weighted kappa coefficient when the binary test and the gold standard are applied to all of the patients in a random sample. The results have been applied to the diagnosis of coronary artery disease.

Keywords:

• Binary test
• Confidence interval
• Weighted kappa coefficient

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 92B15
• 62P10

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Department for Innovation, Science and Business of the Autonomous Government of Andalusia, Spain, grant number FQM-01459. We thank the Editor and the referee for their helpful comments that improved the quality of the article.