THIRTY-TWO OBSERVERS AND ONE PATIENT: A STUDY OF DIAGNOSTIC RELIABILITY.

The article reports on the study of diagnostic reliability of thirty-two observers and a patient. The fact of the low reliability of psychiatric diagnosis is now well established. This article reports on the first clinical application of the Boston City Hospital-Behavior checklist. In the study, the instrument was used to describe the inter-observer reliability of 32 health professionals of widely disparate professional affiliation and experience who were asked to diagnose a psychiatric patient presented to all of them at the same time.