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. 2017 Jan;26(1):1-14.
doi: 10.1093/reseval/rvw025. Epub 2017 Feb 14.

'Your comments are meaner than your score': score calibration talk influences intra- and inter-panel variability during scientific grant peer review

Elizabeth L Pier  1   2 , Joshua Raclaw  1   3 , Anna Kaatz  1 , Markus Brauer  4 , Molly Carnes  1 , Mitchell J Nathan  2 , Cecilia E Ford  1   5
Affiliations

'Your comments are meaner than your score': score calibration talk influences intra- and inter-panel variability during scientific grant peer review

Elizabeth L Pier et al. Res Eval. 2017 Jan.

Abstract

In scientific grant peer review, groups of expert scientists meet to engage in the collaborative decision-making task of evaluating and scoring grant applications. Prior research on grant peer review has established that inter-reviewer reliability is typically poor. In the current study, experienced reviewers for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were recruited to participate in one of four constructed peer review panel meetings. Each panel discussed and scored the same pool of recently reviewed NIH grant applications. We examined the degree of intra-panel variability in panels' scores of the applications before versus after collaborative discussion, and the degree of inter-panel variability. We also analyzed videotapes of reviewers' interactions for instances of one particular form of discourse-Score Calibration Talk-as one factor influencing the variability we observe. Results suggest that although reviewers within a single panel agree more following collaborative discussion, different panels agree less after discussion, and Score Calibration Talk plays a pivotal role in scoring variability during peer review. We discuss implications of this variability for the scientific peer review process.

Keywords: collaboration; decision making; discourse analysis; peer review.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Reverse nine-point scoring rubric used by NIH for the evaluation of R01 grants (adapted from NIH 2015).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Graph of the Krippendorff’s α statistics for the Preliminary Reviewer Scores, Final Reviewer Scores, and Final Panel Scores both within each CSS panel (‘intra-panel’) and between the four CSS panels (‘inter-panel’). A value of α ≥ 0.8 is considered ‘reliable’, and values between 0.67 and 0.8 are considered suitable for drawing ‘tentative conclusions’ (Krippendorff 2004). All applications are included.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Example #1 of S-SCT (from CSS1). The underlined portion of the transcript constitutes the S-SCT.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Example #2 of S-SCT (from CSS3). The underlined portion of the transcript constitutes the S-SCT.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Example #1 of O-SCT (from CSS2). Everything up until the Vice-chairperson begins a new project in line 39 is included in this instance of O-SCT (see Supplementary Appendix B).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Example #2 of O-SCT (from CSS1). The underlined portion of the transcript constitutes the O-SCT.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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