Reliability of ordinal outcomes in forensic black-box studies.

Forensic science disciplines such as latent print examination, bullet and cartridge case comparisons, and shoeprint analysis, involve subjective decisions by forensic experts throughout the examination process. Most of the decisions involve ordinal categories. Examples include a three-category outcome for latent print comparisons (exclusion, inconclusive, identification) and a seven-category outcome for footwear comparisons (exclusion, indications of non-association, inconclusive, limited association of class characteristics, association of class characteristics, high degree of association, identification).