The
Familywise Error Rate of a Simultaneous Confidence Band
for the Net Health Benefit Function
Investigators: Morris Meisner, PhD, Eugene
Laska, PhD, Carole Siegel, PhD, and Joseph Wanderling, M.A.
- Goals
There is considerable interest in the use of net health benefit (NHB) for decision making in cost-effectiveness analysis. A simultaneous confidence band for NHB(l) may be obtained by forming a (1-a) confidence interval based on student's t statistic and letting the willingness-to-pay value, l, run over all values. The pointwise errror rate (PWER) at fixed l of this confidence interval is a. The familywise error rate (FWER) is the probability that for at least one value of l the simultaneous confidence band does not cover the true NHB(l). The FWER equals P(T-square> t-squared), where T-square follows Hotelling's central distribution and t is the (1-a/2) quantile of the Student t distribution.
- Computer Programs
Procedures for calculating the FWER given the PWER, the PWER given the FWER, plotting and tabling the FWER, have been programmed in Mathematica. To download this program, click below:
You may also view the program code on screen by selecting the following:
- Publication:
Meisner M, Laska E, Siegel C, Wanderling, J. (2001). The familywise error rate of a simultaneous confidence band for the net health benefit function. Health Economics.11(3):275-280.
