Cleveland Family Study

18.3 Certification and QA

18.3.1 Certification of the Chief Polysomnologist.

The CP will be an experienced polysomnologist (>5 years experience in scoring). S/he will be required to:

• Demonstrate a complete understanding of scoring rules and ability to articulate reasons for assigning epoch by epoch codes for sleep staging and respiratory events scoring.
• Demonstrate a level of agreement (within 10% for summary respiratory disturbance index (RDI) and sleep stages and 15% level of agreement for arousal index) with a second experienced polysomnologist (each scoring the same 10 records “blinded”).
• Demonstrate a 5% level of agreement (with-in scorer reliability) by scoring the same 10 records, at least one week apart.

18.3.2 Certification of Scorers.

Each scorer will be required to demonstrate a complete understanding of scoring rules and ability to articulate reasons for assigning epoch by epoch codes for sleep and respiratory scoring. This will be judged by review of several records with the CP or a physician-investigator.

Each novice scorer will be required to score 50 records under the supervision of a certified scorer. Ten of these records will be selected from a standardized score set. Data from these 10 records must show a 10% level of agreement with the CP or a senior scorer for respiratory events and sleep stages and a 15% level of agreement for arousals.

The CP (or designee) will review (epoch by epoch) the first 10 records scored by each novice scorer after certification. After that s/he will check score a randomly chosen 20% of the first 100 records