CONFIDENCE INTERVALS FOR POWER, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MEDICAL TRIALS*

Abstract

A technique is given for drawing valid inferences in cases where performance characteristics of statistical procedures (e.g. power for a test, or probability of a correct selection for a selection procedure) depend upon unknown parameters (e.g. an unknown variance). The technique is especially useful in situations where sample sizes are small (e.g. in many medical trials); the “usual” approximate procedures are found to be misleading in such cases.