Premium
Spending functions and continuous‐monitoring boundaries
Author(s) -
Proschan Michael A.,
Gordon Lan K. K.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.5481
Subject(s) - interim , continuous monitoring , function (biology) , econometrics , computer science , brownian motion , economics , mathematics , statistics , operations management , law , evolutionary biology , political science , biology
Clinical trials are monitored periodically for safety, efficacy, and futility. The spending function is a popular tool for efficacy monitoring because it does not require pre‐specification of the number or timing of interim analyses. But there are infinitely many spending functions, so some guidance on how to choose one is helpful. We consider spending functions that are generated from different continuous‐monitoring boundaries for Brownian motion. We use properties of the continuous‐monitoring boundaries to derive properties of the associated spending function. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.