6.10 Quality Assurance and Quality Control

6.10.1 Weekly QA Exercises at the SRC

Weekly scorers’ staff meetings will be conducted at the SRC, with dedication of between one to two hours of time per week for the scorers to meet and discuss scoring issues. The weekly exercises will be organized by the QCM, with topics that will reflect ongoing needs as identified by the staff or by the CC/PSG Committee. These exercises will include:

• scoring of randomly chosen epochs;
• scoring of problem records/epochs;
• discussions of any problematic rules/examples identified during scoring
• rotating “paired” scoring exercises

Exercises will include individual scoring with follow-up discussion of any discrepancies in assigned scores. A discussion, with participation of SRC investigators, will establish a “consensus” score for discrepant records. Results of discrepancies between any scorers will be reviewed at weekly meetings with investigators. The results of the deliberations will be kept on file. This will include copies of ambiguous records and a summary of any arbitration.

Examples of organized meetings include:

• QA Exercises: At least monthly, individual scorers will score the same 50 epochs from a selected study. Most studies for QA scoring will be chosen randomly; however, scorers also will identify problematic studies that may show useful training/teaching points during QA exercises. Scoring of such designated studies will be recorded on an epoch by epoch basis. Differences in any epoch or event assignment between scorers will be discussed during the weekly QA meeting. Results of this discussion will be noted on the separate form (group consensus). When a group consensus cannot be reached, the epoch or event will be designated “indeterminate”. Data will be entered into a database and summarized quarterly for internal QA tracking.

• Scoring Exercises: On the weeks when no QA exercise is performed, 30-60 minutes of paired scoring (one scorer scoring, one watching) or team scoring (with group members acting as a single unit) will be done. Noted differences will be discussed after the scoring exercise. Scorers will rotate roles, partners, and teams so that all interactions occur over any given time period.

• Studies which pose difficulties in scoring or present interesting problems will be reviewed by the entire SRC staff during weekly meetings. Minutes from these meetings and printed copies of problem epochs will be maintained.