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We are developing seizure descriptions as a basis for decision support. Based on an existing dataset we used the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula to estimate how many neurologist/epileptologists are needed to obtain reliable seizure descriptions (rho = 0.9). By extending the number of participants to the required level we found that the number of participants needed to obtain a reliability coefficient of 0.9 were in accordance with the number of participants determined from the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula. Systematic differences between the participants were minor and not statistically significant.

Purpose: To evaluate the inter-participant agreement in the selection of symptoms for the description of seizure types., Methods: We evaluated the inter-participant agreement for a number of seizure types by comparing the actual agreement to the agreement that would result from random symptom selection as well as the maximal attainable agreement among participants that selected a different number of symptoms., Results: For all seizure types the agreement in the symptom selection among the majority of the participants is significantly higher than expected by chance, but not reaching the maximum agreement attainable., Conclusion: Although the maximum agreement possible is not obtained, the symptoms selected by a majority of the participants seem to be adequate for the description of seizure types.