Forensic Footwear Reliability: Part III—Positive Predictive Value, Error Rates, and Inter‐Rater Reliability*

Nicole Richetelli · Lesley Hammer · Jacqueline A. Speir

17 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Forensic Sciences

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Reliability and Agreement in Measurement Legal processes and jurisprudence Deception detection and forensic psychology

Abstract

Abstract Over the course of 19 months, West Virginia University collected reports from 70 footwear experts, each performing 12 questioned‐test comparisons, resulting in a dataset that includes more than 1000 examiner attributes (education, training, certification status, etc.), 3500 impression features identified and evaluated (clarity, totality, and similarity), and 840 source conclusions. The results were used to estimate the performance of forensic footwear examiners in the United States, including error rates, predictive value (PV), and measures of inter‐rater reliability (IRR). For the dataset and mate‐prevalence (31.5%) used in this study, results indicate correct predictive value varies from 94.5% for exclusions, 85.0% for identifications, and between 70.1% and 65.2% for limited associations and association of class, respectively (with all other conclusions producing PVs between these extremes). After data transformation based on ground truth, the case study materials show a false‐positive rate of 0.48%, a false‐negative rate of 15.6%, a (correct) positive predictive value of 98.8%, and a (correct) negative predictive value of 93.3%. In addition to error rates and PVs, inter‐rater reliability was likewise computed to describe examiner reproducibility; results indicate a Gwet AC2 agreement coefficient of 0.751–0.692 when using a six‐ and four‐level reporting structure, respectively, which translates into “substantial” and “moderate agreement” for a benchmarked verbal equivalent scale. The reported performance metrics are further compared against past forensic footwear reliability studies, including a discussion of how the use of a six‐level reporting structure impacts results.

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References

1977The Measurement of Observer Agreement for Categorical Data 2014Handbook of Inter-Rater Reliability: The Definitive Guide to Measuring the Extent of Agreement Among Raters 2011Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisions 2009The testimony of forensic identification science: What expert witnesses say and what factfinders hear.2015Lay understanding of forensic statistics: Evaluation of random match probabilities, likelihood ratios, and verbal equivalents.2018Perceived strength of forensic scientists’ reporting statements about source conclusions 2011If the Shoe Fits They Might Acquit: The Value of Forensic Science Testimony 1996Survey of the conclusions drawn of similar footwear cases in various crime laboratories

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