A curtailed selection procedure for comparing Bernoulli outcomes with a control

J Biopharm Stat. 2021 Jan 2;31(1):14-24. doi: 10.1080/10543406.2020.1765369. Epub 2020 May 14.

Abstract

A sequential selection procedure is proposed for comparing k(>1) experimental Bernoulli populations with a controlled Bernoulli population. The comparison is made according to the success probability. Based on the numbers of successes of the k+1 populations, the indifference zone formulation and the subset selection formulation are integrated to select either the best population or a random-sized subset that contains the best population. Observations are taken one at a time and the populations that are no longer comparable are eliminated until either the best is identified or the total number of observations in at least one population reaches a specific upper bound. We show that the proposed sequential procedure satisfies the same probability requirements as does the corresponding fixed-sample-size procedure. Furthermore, the expected sample size from each population for the proposed procedure is significantly smaller than the sample size required by the fixed-sample-size procedure.

Keywords: Indifference zone approach; expected sample size; integrated formulation; least favorable configuration; subset selection approach; worst configuration.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Sample Size*