Matters arising: methodological issues on evaluating agreement between medical students’ attitudes towards drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy by Cohen’s kappa analysis

Abstract

Abstract Background The purpose of this article is to discuss the statistical methods for agreement analysis used in Richelle’s article (BMC Med Educ 22:335, 2022). The authors investigated the attitudes of final-year medical students regarding substance use during pregnancy and identified the factors that influence these attitudes. Methods We found that Cohen’s kappa value for measuring the agreement between these medical students’ attitudes towards drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy was questionable. In addition, we recommend using weighted kappa instead of Cohen’s kappa for agreement analysis at the presence of three categories. Results The agreement improved from “good” (Cohen’s kappa) to “very good” (weighted kappa) for medical students’ attitudes towards drugs/alcohol use during pregnancy. Conclusion To conclude, we recognize that this does not significantly alter the conclusions of the Richelle et al. paper, but it is necessary to ensure that the appropriate statistical tools are used.