The preferred goal of any EQA scheme is to develop a `reference` group.
When you develop a PEER subgroup from within the PROFESSIONAL participants, the distribution of your staff may or may not vary.
This has been an issue since QAPonline was developed. Initially, individuals were nominated by clinics to act as internal PEER staff and QAPonline used this participants as a de-facto PEER group. In 2010 forward, QAPonline calculates a reference group from experience and performance.
From 2010 forward, QAPonline will define a subgroup of participants if they have more than 10 years AND their performance in 10 or more installments indicates more than 66% of replies are within 1 SD of the trimmed professional mean. - A bit of a mouth full but simply put, experienced, uniformly consistent professionals. Currently this appears to be about 10% of the participants.
The one exception to this PEER generation process will be the WHO 5th edition sperm morphology scheme. In this case QAPonline hopes to develop a network of laboratories who are proficient with Strict Morphology Assessment to drive the EQA program. This is because many (most)laboratories, particularly pathology laboratories, will require significant retaining to meet this standard. IF you are such a laboratory and are interesting in acting as a PEER, please contact QAPonline.