ARM 2024.2 Release Notes

Equivalence Testing

Use Equivalence Tests to determine if treatments are effectively the same. The same AOV letters imply that treatments are “not significantly different” but this is not the same as “significantly the same” which is the goal of Equivalence Tests.

Step 1: Researcher defines how large of a difference is insignificant

  • This Limit creates an equivalence interval about the standard treatment for comparison.

Step 2: Hypothesis Test: the difference between treatments is outside the equivalence interval

  • Two one-sided tests determine if the difference is “outside the interval”

Define tests on Settings > Statistics tab

Limit can be entered as:

  • Percent of Standard
  • Absolute Value
  • Cohen’s d
    (a measure of effect size)

Analysis is performed when AOV option to Include equivalent tests is selected.

P-value for “smaller than lower limit” (1) and “larger than higher limit” are listed. Need both to be significant to conclude equivalence.

See Equivalence Tests for more examples from literature and real-life, as well as statistical calculations and theory.

‘Required’ Assessment Header field

Describe the necessity of an assessment or SE.

  • REQUIR – required rating which must be performed
  • ALTERN – alternative, a rating is required but allows a choice of at least 1 of assessments/SEs marked as ALTERN
  • OPTION – optional rating, but recommended to perform the rating when applicable

When a column is set to REQUIR:

  • The column cannot be deleted
  • A validation error occurs if the column does not have data, when the Trial Status is marked as ‘Final’ or beyond.

In both cases, the recommended action is to enter a period to identify missing data, if the assessment cannot be performed for some reason.

See ARM 2024.x Features (pdf) for a presentation of features added to ARM this year.

  • Watch the PowerPoint version in presentation mode to view embedded feature-in-action videos.

See the Change Log (txt) for a complete list of all changes made in this (and previous) versions of ARM.