INTEREXAMINER AGREEMENT FOR READINGS OF DIP SLIDE TESTS FOR SALIVARY MUTANS STREPTOCOCCI AND LACTOBACILLI

This study reports the interexaminer agreement of three pairs of evalu ators of salivary dip slide tests for mutans streptococci and lactobac illi. 717 Cariescreen(R) SM and Bactotest(R) LB dip slides were availa ble for assessment by 2 dentists and 1 dental hygienist. A single cali bration session was held prior to the onset of the study. Each dip sli de was read once by each examiner independently. Among the three pairs of examiners, Pearson R values ranged from 0.84 to 0.90 for Cariescre en and from 0.78 to 0.87 for Bactotest. Kappa statistic values ranged from 0.56 to 0.61 for Cariescreen and from 0.70 to 0.74 for Bactotest. The range of agreement was from 72.2 to 76.9% for Cariescreen and fro m 86.4 to 88.3% for Bactotest. The majority of disagreements were of o ne category in magnitude, though there were a few disagreements of gre ater magnitude. This study found moderately strong agreement among the three examiners; it suggests that multiple examiners of dip slide tes ts carefully calibrated initially and periodically to ensure a high le vel of agreement.