In this paper, we review the adaptive design methodology of Li et al. (Biostatistics 3:277-287) for two-stage trials with mid-trial sample size adjustment. We argue that it is closer in principle to a group sequential design, in spite of its obvious adaptive element. Several extensions are proposed that aim to make it even more attractive and transparent alternative to a standard (fixed sample ...

OBJECTIVE To update evidence from studies on family intervention in schizophrenia looking carefully at methodological issues. METHOD Twenty-five studies were reviewed, using specific outcome criteria, and computing effect sizes whenever possible. RESULTS Effect on relapse is relatively well assessed, although differences emerged particularly in comparison with poor control treatments and di...

This study examined the relative family-wise error (FWE) rate and statistical power of multivariate permutation tests (MPTs), Bonferroni-adjusted alpha, and uncorrected-alpha tests of significance for bivariate associations. Although there are many previous applications of MPTs, this is the first to apply it to testing bivariate associations. Electrocortical studies were selected as an example ...

A promising method for calculating free energy differences DeltaF is to generate nonequilibrium data via "fast-growth" simulations or by experiments--and then use Jarzynski's equality. However, a difficulty with using Jarzynski's equality is that DeltaF estimates converge very slowly and unreliably due to the nonlinear nature of the calculation--thus requiring large, costly data sets. The purpo...

In crystalline metals at small scales, the dislocation density will be increased by stochastic events of dislocation network, leading to a universal power law for various material structures. In this work, we develop a model obeyed by a probability distribution of dislocation density to describe the dislocation formation in terms of a chain reaction. The leading order terms of steady-state of p...

INTRODUCTION Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly important tool to address many problems - from government elections in democracies, stock market prices, to modern online tools such as TripAdvisor or Internet Movie Database (IMDB). The CHNRI method (the acronym for the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative) for setting health research priorities has crowdsourcing as the major comp...

BACKGROUND Patient-reported outcomes (PRO) are important as endpoints in clinical trials and epidemiological studies. Guidelines for the development of PRO instruments and analysis of PRO data have emphasized the need to report methods used for sample size planning. The Raschpower procedure has been proposed for sample size and power determination for the comparison of PROs in cross-sectional s...

Description This package contains basic tools for the purpose of sample size estimation in cluster (group) randomized trials. The package contains traditional power-based methods, empirical smoothing (Rotondi and Donner, 2009), and updated meta-analysis techniques (Rotondi and Donner, 2011).

An important objective in the development of targeted therapies is to identify the populations where the treatment under consideration has positive benefit risk balance. We consider pivotal clinical trials, where the efficacy of a treatment is tested in an overall population and/or in a pre-specified subpopulation. Based on a decision theoretic framework we derive optimized trial designs by max...

The article proposes a simple Bayesian technique for auditing property appraisals to determine whether state accuracy guidelines are met. The proposed technique addresses elicitation of appraisers’ prior beliefs, computation of reappraisal sample sizes and reporting of audit results. To facilitate communication of quantitative audit findings to nonstatistician stakeholders, the concept of varia...