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The design of a clinical trial with several patient categories
Author(s) -
Donner Allan
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
canadian journal of statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.804
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1708-945X
pISSN - 0319-5724
DOI - 10.2307/3315116
Subject(s) - pooling , bayes' theorem , basis (linear algebra) , clinical trial , simple (philosophy) , medicine , statistics , computer science , mathematics , artificial intelligence , bayesian probability , machine learning , philosophy , geometry , epistemology
Various strategies are investigated for selecting one of two medical treatments when patients may be divided into k ≥ 2 categories on the basis of their expected differences in response to the two treatments. The strategies compared are (1) k independent decisions, (2) a single overall decision made on the basis of simple pooling, and (3) the Bayes strategy. The optimal clinical trial size is supplied for each strategy, and conditions delineated under which each of the strategies is to be preferred.