A comparison of methods for the construction of confidence interval for relative risk in stratified matched-pair designs.
A stratified matched-pair study is often designed for adjusting a confounding effect or effect of different trails/centers/ groups in modern medical studies. The relative risk is one of the most frequently used indices in comparing efficiency of two treatments in clinical trials. In this paper, we propose seven confidence interval estimators for the common relative risk and three simultaneous confidence interval estimators for the relative risks in stratified matched-pair designs. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated with respect to their type I error rates, powers, coverage probabilities, and expected widths. Our empirical results show that the percentile bootstrap confidence interval and bootstrap-resampling-based Bonferroni simultaneous confidence interval behave satisfactorily for small to large sample sizes in the sense that (i) their empirical coverage probabilities can be well controlled around the pre-specified nominal confidence level with reasonably shorter confidence widths; and (ii) the empirical type I error rates of their associated test statistics are generally closer to the pre-specified nominal level with larger powers. They are hence recommended. Two real examples from clinical laboratory studies are used to illustrate the proposed methodologies.
Tang
Nian-Sheng
NS
Department of Statistics, Yunnan University, Kunming, People's Republic of China. nstang@ynu.edu.cn
Li
Hui-Qiong
HQ
Tang
Man-Lai
ML
D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D004342:Drug Hypersensitivity / Q000175:diagnosis; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / Q000662:veterinary; D006801:Humans; D015151:Immunoblotting / Q000662:veterinary; D007073:Immunoglobulin E / Q000097:blood; D016927:Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis / Q000302:isolation & purification; D010283:Paratuberculosis / Q000175:diagnosis; D011852:Radioallergosorbent Test / Q000379:methods; D012107:Research Design; D012306:Risk; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
D007073:Immunoglobulin E