Paul A. Roediger

Paul A. Roediger

This work provides documentation for a suite of R functions contained in gonogo.R. The functions provide sensitivity testing practitioners and researchers with an ability to conduct, analyze and simulate various sensitivity experiments involving binary responses and a single stimulus level (e.g., drug dosage, drop height, velocity, etc.). Included are the modern Neyer and 3pod adaptive procedures, as well as the Bruceton and Langlie. The latter two benchmark procedures are capable of being performed according to generalized up-down transformed-response rules. Each procedure is designated phase-one of a three-phase experiment. The goal of phase-one is to achieve overlapping data. The two additional (and optional) refinement phases utilize the D-optimal criteria and the Robbins-Monro-Joseph procedure. The goals of the two refinement phases are to situate testing in the vicinity of the median and tails of the latent response distribution, respectively.

Paul A. Roediger

In this note, conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimate for multidimensional predictor, binary response models are introduced from a sensitivity testing point of view. The well known condition of Silvapulle is translated to be an empirical likelihood maximization which, with existing R code, mechanizes the process of assessing overlap status. The translation shifts the meaning of overlap, defined by geometrical properties of the two-predictor groups, from the intersection of their convex cones is non-empty to the more understandable requirement that the convex hull of their differences contains zero. The code is applied to reveal the character of overlap by examining minimal overlapping structures and cataloging them in dimensions fewer than four. Rules to generate minimal higher dimensional structures which account for overlap are provided. Supplementary materials are available online.