                          MKAPPASC MACRO

The mkappasc.sps macro computes the multi-rater Kappa measure discussed
in S. Siegel and J. N. Castellan's _Nonparametric Statistics for the
Behavioral Sciences_, 2nd edition (1988, McGraw-Hill). Results include
estimated Kappa, a standard error under the null hypothesis and a test
of the null hypothesis of a 0 population value. Note that there are
multiple definitions of agreement and chance agreement. This measure
focuses on agreement between pairs of raters. It does not produce the
same value as Cohen's original Kappa for the case of two raters. See
Siegel and Castellan and the references cited there for further
information.

The mkappasc.sps macro is most easily used by simply having it resident 
as a text file in your working directory and executing the following SPSS 
syntax:

INCLUDE MKAPPASC.SPS.
MKAPPASC VARS=varlist.

where varlist is the list of variables containing the ratings for each
rater. Cases are objects or subjects that have been rated. Data must be
in case by case form (WEIGHT is ignored), and ratings must be coded as
consecutive integers from 1 to the number of rating categories (though
it is not necessary for a particular rater to utilize all categories).

The macro first saves your working data file to a file named ka__tmp1.sav.
The double underscore in the file name is an attempt to render unlikely the
overwriting of an existing file. The SET commands are used to minimize
output; they may be changed or removed if you have problems running the
macro in order to aid in identification of problem sources.actions

The macro should function on any SPSS release offering macro support and the
MATRIX procedure (which means for modular systems you must have the Advanced
Statistics module). It creates two new files, ka__tmp1.sav and ka__tmp2.sav,
which contain respectively your original data, and a file used to store the
values printed in the reported output.

Multiple invocations of the macro in the same interactive session will
produce the following note:

>The macro name specified on the DEFINE command duplicates the name of a
>previously defined macro.  This instance will take precedence.

This warning does not indicate a problem and may be ignored.

