Konstantopoulos Spyros
Boston College.
Eval Rev. 2009 Aug;33(4):335-57. doi: 10.1177/0193841X09337991. Epub 2009 Jun 9.
In experimental designs with nested structures, entire groups (such as schools) are often assigned to treatment conditions. Key aspects of the design in these cluster-randomized experiments involve knowledge of the intraclass correlation structure, the effect size, and the sample sizes necessary to achieve adequate power to detect the treatment effect. However, the units at each level of the hierarchy have a cost associated with them and thus researchers need to decide on sample sizes given a certain budget, when designing their studies. This article provides methods for computing power within an optimal design framework that incorporates costs of units in all three levels for three-level cluster-randomized balanced designs with two levels of nesting at the second and third level. The optimal sample sizes are a function of the variances at each level and the cost of each unit. Overall, larger effect sizes, smaller intraclass correlations at the second and third level, and lower cost of Level 3 and Level 2 units result in higher estimates of power.
在具有嵌套结构的实验设计中,整个组(如学校)通常被分配到处理条件。这些整群随机实验设计的关键方面包括组内相关结构的知识、效应大小以及为检测处理效应获得足够检验效能所需的样本量。然而,层次结构各级别的单元都有与之相关的成本,因此研究人员在设计研究时,需要在给定一定预算的情况下确定样本量。本文提供了在最优设计框架内计算检验效能的方法,该框架纳入了三级整群随机平衡设计中所有三个级别单元的成本,其中第二和第三级别存在两级嵌套。最优样本量是各级别方差和每个单元成本的函数。总体而言,效应大小越大、第二和第三级别组内相关性越小以及第三级别和第二级别单元成本越低,检验效能的估计值就越高。