Investigating Interrater Reliability in an Online RN-to-BSN Program: Disparate Conclusions

Background: Interrater reliability of student-written assignments within a nursing education program is a desirable characteristic to ensure uniform quality of academic work. As online programs that advance RNs to baccalaureate-prepared nurses (i.e., RN-to-BSN programs) grow in popularity, the challenges of quality control increase. Method: Grading data representing mean, median, mode, and range from 19 course sections in an online RN-to-BSN program were submitted. Data were analyzed for measures of central tendency with a query of interrater reliability. Results: The data indicate that instructors assess student performance at a uniformly high level. Conclusion: The data lead to two disparate conclusions: student performance is high and is reliably assessed as such, or the online program suffers from grade inflation. Such disparate conclusions are uniquely endemic to any program that serves the RN-to-BSN population, typically high-performing students who have established prior mastery on licensure examinations.