A primer of inter‐rater reliability in clinical measurement studies: Pros and pitfalls

Quality and sound measurement are fundamental to creating professional knowledge to provide a foundation for clinical decision-making in health services. Therefore, measurement scales are commonly used in health, particularly mental health research. Although there are different types of rating scales, they are often used by a rater to make a judgement about variable/s of interest, for example participants' psychological traits such as empathy, by assigning scores to the scale designed to measure that trait (Tinsley & Weiss, 1975).