Planning a cohort or case-control study with allowance for cost and test power.
This paper deals with balanced and unbalanced allocation designs in cohort and case-control studies. It focuses on: determination of the equal sample size design given the relative risk, R, of disease, the incidence of disease among the nonexposed group or the prevalence of exposure to risk factor, P1, type I and II errors alpha, beta; estimation of the unequal allocation designs that either maximize the test power subject to fixed total cost or minimize the total study expenditure subject to prespecified power using the simplex procedure for function minimization; assessing the efficiency of different allocation designs by computing the power of the exact conditional (Fisher-Irwin) test for comparing two proportions.
D003201:Computers; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D012984:Software; D013223:Statistics as Topic