Further studies are required to investigate the reliability of assessors, whether the assessors are coders, accreditation surveyors or in other health care roles,both individually and in teams. Determining how and under what conditions individual assessor reliability translates into team reliability is a key question. Studies that research how reliability of peer-assessors is enacted, promoted or undermined in situ is an important endeavour. Strategies to promote the more active control of the implementation process in in situ studies should be considered to avert some of the unexpected problems encountered here.