Data from cluster randomized trials do not always have a pure hierarchical structure. For instance, students are nested within schools that may be crossed by neighborhoods, and soldiers are nested within army units that may be crossed by mental health-care professionals. It is important that the random cross-classification is taken into account…

In a randomized controlled trial, a decision needs to be made about the total number of subjects for adequate statistical power. One way to increase the power of a trial is by including a predictive covariate in the model. In this article, the effects of various covariate adjustment strategies on increasing the power is studied for discrete-time…

Studies on event occurrence aim to investigate if and when subjects experience a particular event. The timing of events may be measured continuously using thin precise units or discretely using time periods. The latter metric of time is often used in social science research and the generalized linear model (GLM) is an appropriate model for data…

The inefficiency induced by between-cluster variation in cluster randomized (CR) trials can be reduced by implementing a crossover (CO) design. In a simple CO trial, each subject receives each treatment in random order. A powerful characteristic of this design is that each subject serves as its own control. In a CR CO trial, clusters of subjects…

In the case of trials with nested data, the optimal allocation of units depends on the budget, the costs, and the intracluster correlation coefficient. In general, the intracluster correlation coefficient is unknown in advance and an initial guess has to be made based on published values or subject matter knowledge. This initial estimate is likely…

Three issues need to be decided in the design stage of a longitudinal intervention study: the number of persons, the number of repeated measurements per person, and the duration of the study. The degree to which polynomial effects vary across persons and the drop-out pattern also influence the statistical power to detect intervention effects. This…

Discusses the optimal level of randomization, the optimal allocation of units, and the budget for obtaining a certain power on a test of no treatment effect for populations with two or three levels of nesting and continuous outcomes. Focuses on the estimator of the regression coefficient associated with the treatment condition. (SLD)