Inter‐rater reliability of the Abnormal Involuntary Movements Scale (AIMS) in a multi‐centre trial: results from Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study #394

The US Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) conducted Cooperative Study #394 at nine sites to determine whether vitamin E was a safe and effective treatment for tardive dyskinesia (TD). The study used the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS) to measure TD. To monitor inter‐rater reliability (IRR) on the AIMS, personnel at each site did initial AIMS assessments, on seven occasions, on a set of five unique subjects from videotapes. On four of these occasions raters re‐assessed sets of five subjects from seven to 13 months after their initial ratings. We analysed the initial ratings of 34 videotaped subjects and the second ratings of 19.