Assessment of abstracts submitted for the 1998 BNMS Annual Meeting: Concordance or lottery?

SUMMARYThe selection of abstracts for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the British Nuclear Medicine Society is an arduous task for the assessors. It is only to be expected that assessorsʼ apppreciation of an abstract will be biased by their interests and knowledge. This study assessed the concordance between the marks awarded by specialist and general assessors for the 173 abstracts submitted to the 1998 Spring BNMS meeting. The results showed considerable agreement among the markers for most comparisons. We conclude that the current combination of specialist assessors evaluating specific sections and three generalists assessing all abstracts appears to be working well.