RELIABILITY OF CLINICAL JUDGMENTS AS A FUNCTION OF RANGE OF PATHOLOGY,
Abstract
In an informational analysis of clinical judgment, Miller and Bieri (1963) note 'the rather good agreement by the subjects in regard to the two extreme cases in each stimulus domain,' and note this agreement with psychophysical research where 'extreme stimuli are judged more reliably than are middle-range stimuli.' They further suggest 'it would be of interest to pursue this notion in further research by systematically varying the range of pathology from which the stimulus materials are to be drawn.' During an extensive study of the factors influencing clinical judgment (Hunt and Jones, 1962), the authors accumulated extensive data involving judgments on a 7-point scale of the amount of confusion in patients' thinking as revealed in their individual test responses. These data are amenable to analysis in terms of the standard deviation of the judgments for any scale point. If the relationship noted by Miller and Bieri is a general one, then it would be expected that the standard deviations would be less at the extremes of the scale and larger in the middle ranges.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1943
- Accession Number
- AD0607290
Entities
People
- Melvin L. Schwartz
- Ronald E. Walker
- William A. Hunt
Organizations
- Northwestern University