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Subsection 17.4 Choice of Procedures for Comparing Two Proportions

Study design Two binary variables, but not case-control study Two binary variables, but not case-control study Two binary variables
Parameter Difference in population proportions (\(\pi_1 - \pi_2\)) Relative Risk (\(\pi_1/\pi_2\)) Odds Ratio (\(\tau\))
Null Hypothesis \(H_0\!:\) \(\pi_1 - \pi_2 = 0\) \(H_0\!:\) \(\pi_1/\pi_2 = 1\) \(H_0\!:\) \(\tau = 1\)
Simulation Independent random sampling from binomial processes;
Random assignment with hypergeometric distribution
Exact p-value Fisher’s Exact Test
Can use \(z\) procedures if At least 5 successes and 5 failures in each group
Confidence interval \(\hat{p}_1 - \hat{p}_2 \pm z^*\sqrt{\frac{\hat{p}_1(1-\hat{p}_1)}{n_1} + \frac{\hat{p}_2(1-\hat{p}_2)}{n_2}}\) exp of [ln(\(\hat{p}_1/\hat{p}_2\)) ± \(z^*\sqrt{\frac{1}{A}-\frac{1}{A+C}+\frac{1}{B}-\frac{1}{B+D}}\)] exp of [ln(\(AD/BC\)) ± \(z^*\sqrt{\frac{1}{A}+\frac{1}{B}+\frac{1}{C}+\frac{1}{D}}\)]
R Commands iscamtwopropztest
• observed1 (either the number of successes or sample proportion for first group), n1 (sample size for first group), observed2 (count or proportion), and n2 for the second group
• Optional: hypothesized difference and alternative ("less", "greater", or "two.sided")
• Optional: conf.level
fmsb::riskratio
riskratio(A, B, A+C, B+D, conf.level, p.calc.by.independence = TRUE)
fisher.test
• matrix(c(A, C, B, D), nrow=2)
• alt= ("less", "greater", or "two.sided")
• Optional: conf.int = TRUE, conf.level
JMP Analysis > Fit Y by X or ISCAM Journal file Select Relative Risk Select Odds Ratio
Applets Theory-based Inference > Two proportions or Analyzing Two-way Tables Analyzing Two-way Tables applet > Relative Risk Analyzing Two-way Tables applet > Odds ratio
Note: Fisher’s Exact Test is usually considered a reasonable approximation to the p-value from independent random sampling.
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