title: Modeling approach to diameter breakpoint determination.
abstract: In determining zone diameter breakpoints, the error-rate bounded method focuses directly on the observed discrepancy percentages (very major, major, and minor). These percentages, however, are quite variable due to the number of isolates investigated, the drug-specific relationship between MIC and zone diameter, the location of the isolates relative to the MIC intermediate zone, and the inherent variability of each test. To overcome potential sampling problems, a hierarchical model is proposed which explicitly accounts for each of these factors and probabilities from this model are used to determine diameter breakpoints. A simulation study is performed to demonstrate the improved consistency of this model-based procedure. Application to three published scatterplots demonstrate its interpretability advantages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Purdue University, 1399 Mathematical Sciences, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1399, USA. bacraig@stat.purdue.edu
authors.forename: B A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Craig
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D015233:Models, Statistical