A more efficient three-arm non-inferiority test based on pooled estimators of the homogeneous variance

Hida and Tango established a statistical testing framework for the three-arm non-inferiority trial including a placebo with a pre-specified non-inferiority margin to overcome the shortcomings of traditional two-arm non-inferiority trials (such as having to choose the non-inferiority margin). In this...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Statistical methods in medical research 2018-08, Vol.27 (8), p.2437-2446
Main Authors: Lu, Hezhi, Jin, Hua, Zeng, Weixiong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Estimators
Inferiority
Normal distribution
Simulation
Statistical power
Variance
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Summary:Hida and Tango established a statistical testing framework for the three-arm non-inferiority trial including a placebo with a pre-specified non-inferiority margin to overcome the shortcomings of traditional two-arm non-inferiority trials (such as having to choose the non-inferiority margin). In this paper, we propose a new method that improves their approach with respect to two aspects. We construct our testing statistics based on the best unbiased pooled estimators of the homogeneous variance; and we use the principle of intersection-union tests to determine the rejection rule. We theoretically prove that our test is better than that of Hida and Tango for large sample sizes. Furthermore, when that sample size was small or moderate, our simulation studies showed that our approach performed better than Hida and Tango’s. Although both controlled the type I error rate, their test was more conservative and the statistical power of our test was higher.
ISSN:0962-2802
1477-0334
DOI:10.1177/0962280216681036