multilevel (version 2.7)

awg: Brown and Hauenstein (2005) awg agreement index

Description

Calculates the awg index proposed by Brown and Hauenstein (2005). The awg agreement index can be applied to either a single item vector or a multiple item matrix representing a scale. The awg is an analogue to Cohen's kappa. Brown and Hauenstein (pages 177-178) recommend interpreting the awg similarly to how the rwg (James et al., 1984) is commonly interpreted with values of .70 indicating acceptable agreement; values between .60 and .69 as reasonable agreement, and values less than .60 as unacceptable levels of agreement.

Usage

awg(x, grpid, range=c(1,5))

Arguments

x

A vector representing a single item or a matrix representing a scale of interest. If a matrix, each column of the matrix represents a scale item, and each row represents an individual respondent.

grpid

A vector identifying the groups from which x originated.

range

A vector with the lower and upper response options (e.g., c(1,5)) for a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

Value

grpid

The group identifier.

a.wg

The awg estimate for each group.

nitems

The number of scale items when x is a matrix or dataframe representing a multi-item scale. This value is not returned when x is a vector.

nraters

The number of raters. Given that the awg estimate is based on the sample estimate of variance with N-1 in the denominator, Brown and Hauenstein (2005) contend that awg can be estimated on as few as A-1 raters where A represents the number of response options specified by the range option (5 as the default). Note that in many situations nraters will correspond to group size.

References

Brown, R. D. & Hauenstein, N. M. A. (2005). Interrater Agreement Reconsidered: An Alternative to the rwg Indices. Organizational Research Methods, 8, 165-184.

Wagner, S. M., Rau, C., & Lindemann, E. (2010). Multiple informant methodology: A critical review and recommendations. Sociological Methods and Research, 38, 582-618.

See Also

rwg rwg.j ad.m

Examples

# NOT RUN {
data(lq2002)

#Examples for multiple item scales
awg.out<-awg(lq2002[,3:13],lq2002$COMPID,range=c(1,5))
summary(awg.out)

#Example for single item measure
awg.out<-awg(lq2002$LEAD05,lq2002$COMPID,range=c(1,5))
summary(awg.out)
# }