Hobbs Dustin A, Warne Michael St J, Markich Scott J
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Integr Environ Assess Manag. 2005 Jul;1(3):174-80. doi: 10.1897/2004-003r.1.
Good quality toxicity data underpins robust hazard and risk assessments in aquatic systems and the derivation of water quality guidelines for ecosystems. Hence, an objective scheme to assess the quality of toxicity data forms an important part of this process. The variation of scores from 2 research papers using the Australasian ecotoxicity database (AED) quality assessment scheme was evaluated by 23 ecotoxicologists. The results showed that the quality class that the assessors gave each paper varied by less than 10% when compared with a quality score agreed a priori between the authors of this study. It was determined that the majority of the variation in each assessment was due to ambiguous or poorly written assessment criteria, information that was difficult to find, or information in the paper that was overlooked by the assessor. This led to refinements of the assessment criteria in the AED, which resulted in a 16% improvement (i.e., reduction) in the mean variation of scores for the 2 papers when compared with the a priori scores. The improvement in consensus among different assessors evaluating the same research papers suggests that the data quality assessment scheme proposed in this article provides a more robust scheme for assessing the quality of aquatic toxicity data than methods currently available.
高质量的毒性数据是水生系统中可靠的危害和风险评估以及生态系统水质准则推导的基础。因此，一个评估毒性数据质量的客观方案构成了这一过程的重要组成部分。23位生态毒理学家评估了使用澳大拉西亚生态毒性数据库（AED）质量评估方案的2篇研究论文得分的差异。结果表明，与本研究作者事先商定的质量得分相比，评估者给每篇论文的质量等级差异小于10%。经确定，每次评估中大部分差异是由于评估标准含糊不清或表述不佳、难以找到的信息，或评估者忽略的论文中的信息。这导致对AED中的评估标准进行了完善，与事先得分相比，2篇论文得分的平均差异降低了16%（即得到改善）。评估同一研究论文的不同评估者之间共识的提高表明，本文提出的数据质量评估方案比现有方法提供了一个更可靠的方案来评估水生毒性数据的质量。
