DETECTION OF A TREATMENT EFFECT WHEN NOT ALL EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS WILL RESPOND TO TREATMENT

Non-responders attenuate average response and inflate sample variance, reducing the power of standard parametric tests. A new Fisher's type randomization test, which has no parametric analogue, is recommended when not all subjects may be capable of responding to treatment. The new test was evaluated by Monte Carlo means and applied to drug abuse data and to virus titre data. In most trial applications the new test proved to be more sensitive to treatment effects than Student's t.