Robust approaches for the analysis of agreement between clinical measurements: development of guidance and software tools for researchers

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Agreement studies are concerned with assessing how closely two different methods or devices agree in their measurements of the same variable. For example, an agreement study may wish to compare two devices for measuring blood pressure, and if the measurements from the two devices are sufficiently close to each other, we can conclude that the two devices agree. There are many different statistical approaches that can be used to assess agreement, but not all of them are valid in every context, and some are not valid in any context. In this project, we wish to review the recent literature to investigate the methods that have been used by researchers for assessing agreement in practice. We will also develop a new method for assessing agreement that we expect will be suitable for when data does not follow the unusual pattern. We will thoroughly test this new method against standard approaches, as well as evaluate other newly developed agreement methods that have been put forward by other researchers in the last few years. In addition, we will develop software tools so that researchers can easily use the new approaches, as well as standard methods. Finally, we will publicise all of our research findings so that they are readily accessible by the research community. One of the main aims of this project is to promote the use of valid methods to assess agreement, and prevent any wrong applications of agreement methods, which could lead to inferior devices, medical procedures, or data collection methods being used in patients.