Comparison of the Average Kappa Coefficients of Binary Diagnostic Tests Done on the Same Subjects

Abstract

The average kappa coefficient of a binary diagnostic test is a chance corrected index between the binary diagnostic test and the gold standard, and it depends on the sensitivity and the specificity of the diagnostic test and on the disease prevalence. In this article, several hypothesis tests are studied to compare the average kappa coefficients of two (o more) binary diagnostic tests done on the same subjects. Simulation experiments were carried out to study the type I errors and the powers of the hypothesis tests studied. A program in R was written to solve the problem studied and it can be freely downloaded from the Internet. The results were applied to a real example on the diagnosis of coronary disease.