Despite the fact that great reliance is placed on clinical electroencephalography in the diagnosis of brain disorders, there is relatively little research on the re- liability of electroencephalographers' judgments. In an analysis (') of intra-judge reliability, it was found that the reliability of an electroencephalographer's judgments over an eight-month period varied greatly, and that he was inconsistent in his ability to duplicate his appraisals of several of the factors used in the interpretation of the EEGs. The questions raised about intra-judge reliability and the lack of empirical evaluation of inter-judge reliability provide strong support for investigations of the consistency of judgment in clinical electroencephalography.
This study was designed to measure inter-judge reliabilities for a series of factors used in the interpretation of EEGs, and to ascertain whether reliabilities differ according to the type of subject being rated. On this latter point, numerous studies''. a, 4 , 5 , indicate that the EEGs for behavioral problem children have more abnormality than the EEGs for a random sample of children. In view of the assumed differences in amount of abnormality, a sample of behavioral problem boys and a matched sample of well behaved boys were used.