Personal hygiene practices, including facewashing and handwashing, reduce transmission of pathogens, but are difficult to measure. Using color theory principles, we developed and tested a novel metric that generates quantitative measures of facial and hand cleanliness, proxy indicators of personal hygiene practices. In this cross-sectional study, conventional qualitative cleanliness metrics (e.g., presence or absence of nasal and ocular discharge, dirt under nails or on finger pads and palms) were also recorded. We generated Gwet's agreement coefficients to determine the inter-rater reliability of novel and conventional metrics between various rating groups, where appropriate, including two non-blinded raters, non-blinded vs. blinded raters, three blinded raters, and blinded vs. computer raters. Inter-rater reliability of the novel metric was high across all rating groups, ranging from 0.98 (95% CI: 0.97, 0.99) to 0.90 (95% CI: 0.90, 0.91) for facial cleanliness, and 0.97 (95% CI: 0.96, 0.98) to 0.92 (95% CI: 0.91, 0.93) for hand cleanliness. Our novel metric generates more nuanced data than conventional qualitative metrics, and allows for quantifiable assessments of facial and hand cleanliness.

个人卫生习惯，包括洗脸和洗手，可减少病原体的传播，但难以衡量。我们使用色彩理论原理，开发并测试了一种新颖的度量标准，该度量标准可生成定量的面部和手部清洁度指标，作为个人卫生习惯的替代指标。在该横断面研究中，还记录了常规的定性清洁度指标（例如，是否存在鼻涕和眼屎，指甲下或指垫和手掌上的污垢）。我们生成了Gwet的协议系数，以确定各种评估组之间适当的新颖和传统指标的评估者间可靠性，包括两个非盲评估者，非盲评估者与盲评估者，三个盲评估者和计算机评估者。 。在所有评分组中，新指标的评分者间可靠性均很高，面部清洁度从0.98（95％CI：0.97，0.99）到0.90（95％CI：0.90，0.91）和0.97（95％CI：0.96）不等。 （0.98）至0.92（95％CI：0.91、0.93）以提高手部清洁度。与传统的定性指标相比，我们的新颖指标可生成更多细微差别的数据，并且可以对面部和手部清洁度进行量化评估。