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A Note on the Linearly and Quadratically Weighted Kappa Coefficients

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Abstract

The linearly and quadratically weighted kappa coefficients are popular statistics in measuring inter-rater agreement on an ordinal scale. It has been recently demonstrated that the linearly weighted kappa is a weighted average of the kappa coefficients of the embedded 2 by 2 agreement matrices, while the quadratically weighted kappa is insensitive to the agreement matrices that are row or column reflection symmetric. A rank-one matrix decomposition approach to the weighting schemes is presented in this note such that these phenomena can be demonstrated in a concise manner.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61203131, 11171177, and Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program 2014z21017.

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Correspondence to Pingke Li.

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Li, P. A Note on the Linearly and Quadratically Weighted Kappa Coefficients. Psychometrika 81, 795–801 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-016-9501-5

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