INTERRATER AGREEMENT IN THE ASSESSMENT OF SOLVENT EXPOSURE AT A CAR ASSEMBLY PLANT

This study investigated the feasibility and the reproducibility of a r etrospective assessment of solvent exposure in the painting operations of a car assembly plant. Five industrial hygienists (the raters) revi ewed summary documents on plant operations and solvent exposure levels , developed from plant records and interviews. The raters independentl y reviewed 695 department-job-year combinations compiled from 29 work histories and used semi-quantitative scores to rate solvent exposure. Inter-rater agreement was evaluated by computing the percent concordan ce index and the intra-class correlation coefficient (r(I)). There was discordance among raters, a large proportion of which pertained to lo w exposure levels (1-5 ppm). The computation of the r(I) is sensitive to the distribution of exposure levels. A low r(I) can be observed for a rare exposure even if the percent concordance is high. Inter-rater agreement was good for cumulative exposure scores computed for frequen t exposures: coatings (r(I) = 0.67), aromatic hydrocarbons (r(I) = 0.6 6), and petroleum distillates (r(I) = 0.62).