Discrete Voting Thresholds in Revision ACL Consensus: An Arithmetic and Evidence Audit

Authors

  • Cole Richardson Author
  • Ian Matthews Author
  • Grant Douglas Author

Keywords:

expert consensus, discrete thresholds, revision ACL, agreement, evidence certainty, research priorities

Abstract

Percentage agreement changes in discrete steps when an expert panel is small. This secondary arithmetic audit examines the agreement rule reported in an adult revision ACL consensus statement. Conditional on 23 valid binary responses, a 75 percent threshold requires 18 affirmative votes: 17 votes yield 73.913 percent and 18 yield 78.261 percent. Increasing the nominal rule to 80 percent requires 19 votes. These calculations describe the operational label rather than clinical certainty or the distribution of opinions among all surgeons. The accompanying methodological synthesis separates panel composition, item wording, response denominators, evidence appraisal, and research priorities. No individual ballots, new patient outcomes, or treatment effects are analyzed. The contribution is a reproducible rule audit that clarifies what an agreement percentage can establish and identifies which additional process records would make consensus interpretation more transparent.

Archive transfer

Originally published in Inclusive Growth and Management Quarterly (NB), article 216, on 2026-10-25. Transferred to Journal of Research and Discovery on 3 November 2026. The original authors, publication date and article text are retained.

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Published

2026-10-25

Issue

2026: Transferred NB archive: original Vol. 4, No. 4

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Articles

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Copyright (c) 2026 Cole Richardson, Ian Matthews, Grant Douglas (Author)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.