Step-down multiple testing procedures for the overall population and partitioning subgroups

ABSTRACT

Multiple comparisons procedures are described for two-armed studies where there is a primary hypothesis and one or more ordered secondary hypotheses in the scenario where the objective is to test for an effect on the overall population and/or nonoverlapping subgroups that partition the population. This scenario arises when the subgroups are defined by disease etiology or by other patient characteristics such as genetic factors, age, sex, or race, and the treatment may have differential effects in the subgroups. The procedures described control the family-wise error rate in the strong sense at a specified level α.

KEYWORDS:

• Bonferroni
• closure principle
• gatekeeping tests

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The author reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.