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Calculates and returns the lower and upper limit of the repeated confidence intervals of the trial.

Usage

getRepeatedConfidenceIntervals(
  design,
  dataInput,
  ...,
  directionUpper = NA,
  tolerance = 1e-06,
  stage = NA_integer_
)

Arguments

design

The trial design.

dataInput

The summary data used for calculating the test results. This is either an element of DatasetMeans, of DatasetRates, or of DatasetSurvival and should be created with the function getDataset(). For more information see getDataset().

...

Further arguments to be passed to methods (cf., separate functions in "See Also" below), e.g.,

normalApproximation

The type of computation of the p-values. Default is FALSE for testing means (i.e., the t test is used) and TRUE for testing rates and the hazard ratio. For testing rates, if normalApproximation = FALSE is specified, the binomial test (one sample) or the exact test of Fisher (two samples) is used for calculating the p-values. In the survival setting, normalApproximation = FALSE has no effect.

equalVariances

The type of t test. For testing means in two treatment groups, either the t test assuming that the variances are equal or the t test without assuming this, i.e., the test of Welch-Satterthwaite is calculated, default is TRUE.

intersectionTest

Defines the multiple test for the intersection hypotheses in the closed system of hypotheses when testing multiple hypotheses. Five options are available in multi-arm designs: "Dunnett", "Bonferroni", "Simes", "Sidak", and "Hierarchical", default is "Dunnett". Four options are available in population enrichment designs: "SpiessensDebois" (one subset only), "Bonferroni", "Simes", and "Sidak", default is "Simes".

varianceOption

Defines the way to calculate the variance in multiple treatment arms (> 2) or population enrichment designs for testing means. For multiple arms, three options are available: "overallPooled", "pairwisePooled", and "notPooled", default is "overallPooled". For enrichment designs, the options are: "pooled", "pooledFromFull" (one subset only), and "notPooled", default is "pooled".

stratifiedAnalysis

For enrichment designs, typically a stratified analysis should be chosen. For testing means and rates, also a non-stratified analysis based on overall data can be performed. For survival data, only a stratified analysis is possible (see Brannath et al., 2009), default is TRUE.

directionUpper

Logical. Specifies the direction of the alternative, only applicable for one-sided testing; default is TRUE which means that larger values of the test statistics yield smaller p-values.

tolerance

The numerical tolerance, default is 1e-06. Must be a positive numeric of length 1.

stage

The stage number (optional). Default: total number of existing stages in the data input.

Value

Returns a matrix with 2 rows and kMax columns containing the lower RCI limits in the first row and the upper RCI limits in the second row, where each column represents a stage.

Details

The repeated confidence interval at a given stage of the trial contains the parameter values that are not rejected using the specified sequential design. It can be calculated at each stage of the trial and can thus be used as a monitoring tool.

The repeated confidence intervals are provided up to the specified stage.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
design <- getDesignInverseNormal(kMax = 2)
data <- getDataset(
    n      = c( 20,  30),
    means  = c( 50,  51),
    stDevs = c(130, 140)
)
getRepeatedConfidenceIntervals(design, dataInput = data)
} # }