Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics

A Comment on Sample Size Calculation for Analysis of Covariance in Parallel Arm Studies

Abstract

Guogen Shan and Changxing Ma

We compare two sample size calculation approaches for analysis of covariance with one covariate. Exact simulation studies are conducted to compare the sample size calculation based on an approach by Borm et al. (2007) (referred to as the B approach) and an exact approach (referred to as the F approach). Although the B approach and the F approach have similar performance when the correlation coefficient is small, the F approach generally has a more accurate sample size calculation as compared to the B approach. Therefore, the F approach for sample size calculation is generally recommended for use in practice.