COMPARISON OF MEASUREMENT METHODS BASED ON A MODEL FOR THE ERROR STRUCTURE

Comparison of methods is a technique often used for investigation of systematic errors of measurement methods. As concerns the design and analysis of such comparisons, much variety of opinion and practice exists. In one approach a few specimens are measured several times by different operators in different laboratories (reproducibility conditions) and in another approach several specimens are measured on one or a few occasions by one operator in the same laboratory (repeatability conditions). In this paper a model for the error structure of measurements is formulated and it is emphasized that one has to distinguish between two types of systematic errors: the first type depends only on the level of the measured quantity and the second type is specific for the separate specimens. On the basis of this model the information which can be obtained from the different designs of method comparisons is discussed. A new approach for the analysis of method comparisons with many specimens is also proposed.