Jacques Feldbau

Bangdiwala's B statistic was created by Bangdiwala in 1985 and is a measure of inter-rater agreement. While not as commonly used as the kappa statistic the B test has been used by various workers. While it is principally used as a graphical aid to inter observer agreement, its asymptotic distribution is known.

Definition

The test is applicable to testing the agreement between two observers. It is defined to be

$B=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }{n}_{ii}^2}{\mathrm{\Sigma }{n}_{i.}{n}_{.i}}$

where n_ii are the values on the main diagonal.Template:Clarify B varies in value between 0 (no agreement) and +1 (perfect agreement).

In large samples B has a normal distribution whose variance has a complicated expression. For small samples a permutation test is indicated.

Guidance on its use and its extension to n x n tables have been provided by Munoz & Bangdiwala. It may be more useful than the more commonly used Cohen's kappa in some circumstances.

Tutorials and examples

Worked examples of the use of Bangdiwala's B have been published. The statistical programming language R has a set of functions that will compute the B test, and a tutorial on the use of a test using these R functions is available.

See also

• Cohen's kappa
• Fleiss' kappa
• Scott's Pi

References

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