Blinded Sample Size Adjustment

Abstract

The determination of the appropriate sample size is an important aspect of planning a clinical trial. In recent years, procedures for estimation of a nuisance parameter to adjust the sample size if necessary have been examined. Here, it is assumed that the clinical trial is conducted for the comparison of two treatments, where the observations are assumed to have normal distributions with a common unknown variance. For sample size determination, the variance is assumed known and the resulting sample size is sensitive to misspecification of the variance. An estimate of the variance, obtained while the clinical trial is ongoing, can often be used to assess the appropriateness of the assumed variance. The use of a blinded estimate of the variance to potentially adjust the sample size is examined.