Family-wise error rate control in clinical trials with overlapping populations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Luschei, Remi, Brannath, Werner
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Luschei, Remi
Brannath, Werner
author_facet Luschei, Remi
Brannath, Werner
contents We consider clinical trials with multiple, overlapping patient populations, that test multiple treatment policies specifically tailored to these populations. Such designs may lead to multiplicity issues, as false statements will affect several populations. For type I error control, often the family-wise error rate (FWER) is controlled, which is the probability to reject at least one true null hypothesis. If the joint distribution of the test statistics is known, the FWER level can be exhausted by determining critical values or adjusted $α$-levels. The adjustment is typically done under the common ANOVA assumptions. However, the performed tests are then only valid under the rather strong assumption of homogeneous null effects, i.e., when the null hypothesis applies to all subpopulations and their intersections. We show that under cancelling null effects, when heterogeneous effects cancel out in some or all subpopulations, this procedure does not provide FWER control. We also suggest different alternatives and compare them in terms of FWER control and their power.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_09449
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Family-wise error rate control in clinical trials with overlapping populations
Luschei, Remi
Brannath, Werner
Methodology
We consider clinical trials with multiple, overlapping patient populations, that test multiple treatment policies specifically tailored to these populations. Such designs may lead to multiplicity issues, as false statements will affect several populations. For type I error control, often the family-wise error rate (FWER) is controlled, which is the probability to reject at least one true null hypothesis. If the joint distribution of the test statistics is known, the FWER level can be exhausted by determining critical values or adjusted $α$-levels. The adjustment is typically done under the common ANOVA assumptions. However, the performed tests are then only valid under the rather strong assumption of homogeneous null effects, i.e., when the null hypothesis applies to all subpopulations and their intersections. We show that under cancelling null effects, when heterogeneous effects cancel out in some or all subpopulations, this procedure does not provide FWER control. We also suggest different alternatives and compare them in terms of FWER control and their power.
title Family-wise error rate control in clinical trials with overlapping populations
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09449