Balancing Treatment Allocation over Continuous Covariates : A New Imbalance Measure for Minimization
Joint Authors
Source
Journal of Probability and Statistics
Issue
Vol. 2012, Issue 2012 (31 Dec. 2012), pp.1-13, 13 p.
Publisher
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Publication Date
2012-08-22
Country of Publication
Egypt
No. of Pages
13
Main Subjects
Abstract EN
In many clinical trials, it is important to balance treatment allocation over covariates.
Although a great many papers have been published on balancing over discrete covariates, the procedures for continuous covariates have been less well studied.
Traditionally, a continuous covariate usually needs to be transformed to a discrete one by splitting its range into several categories.
Such practice may lead to loss of information and is susceptible to misspecification of covariate distribution.
The more recent papers seek to define an imbalance measure that preserves the nature of continuous covariates and set the allocation rule in order to minimize that measure.
We propose a new design, which defines the imbalance measure by the maximum assignment difference when all possible divisions of the covariate range are considered.
This measure depends only on ranks of the covariate values and is therefore free of covariate distribution.
In addition, we developed an efficient algorithm to implement the new procedure.
By simulation studies we show that the new procedure is able to keep good balance properties in comparison with other popular designs.
American Psychological Association (APA)
Hu, Yanqing& Hu, Feifang. 2012. Balancing Treatment Allocation over Continuous Covariates : A New Imbalance Measure for Minimization. Journal of Probability and Statistics،Vol. 2012, no. 2012, pp.1-13.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-502583
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Hu, Yanqing& Hu, Feifang. Balancing Treatment Allocation over Continuous Covariates : A New Imbalance Measure for Minimization. Journal of Probability and Statistics No. 2012 (2012), pp.1-13.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-502583
American Medical Association (AMA)
Hu, Yanqing& Hu, Feifang. Balancing Treatment Allocation over Continuous Covariates : A New Imbalance Measure for Minimization. Journal of Probability and Statistics. 2012. Vol. 2012, no. 2012, pp.1-13.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-502583
Data Type
Journal Articles
Language
English
Notes
Includes bibliographical references
Record ID
BIM-502583