Properties of Bangdiwala’s B

Abstract

Cohen’s kappa is the most widely used coefficient for assessing interobserver agreement on a nominal scale. An alternative coefficient for quantifying agreement between two observers is Bangdiwala’s B. To provide a proper interpretation of an agreement coefficient one must first understand its meaning. Properties of the kappa coefficient have been extensively studied and are well documented. Properties of coefficient B have been studied, but not extensively. In this paper, various new properties of B are presented. Category B-coefficients are defined that are the basic building blocks of B. It is studied how coefficient B, Cohen’s kappa, the observed agreement and associated category coefficients may be related. It turns out that the relationships between the coefficients are quite different for 2 × 2 tables than for agreement tables with three or more categories.