EquiVal

In general

When applying alternative methods, the Federal Soil Protection Ordinance requires that the analysis results are equivalent or comparable to the results of the declared methods. Since the term equivalence is not well-defined, a concept for the statistical evaluation of the equivalence of analytical methods has been developed on behalf of the advisory committee for the Federal Soil Protection Ordinance 2003 (Steffen Uhlig 2003: Empfehlungen zur Charakterisierung der Gleichwertigkeit und Vergleichbarkeit von Verfahren und Methoden).

This concept has been implemented in the software EquiVal. EquiVal allows the examination of the equivalence regarding recovery and precision based on In-House tests on equivalence. Thereby different data can be included as long as both the reference method and the alternative method have been applied to the respective sample. If a tolerance limit is available, EquiVal provides a conclusion if and how much a comparability of the methods is given. A sample-comprehensive analysis as well as analyses for selected samples are possible.