The Effects of Heteroscedasticity on Tests of Equivalence

Abstract

Tests of equivalence, which are designed to assess the similarity of group means, are becoming more popular, yet very little is known about the statistical properties of these tests. Monte Carlo methods are used to compare the test of equivalence proposed by Schuirmann with modified tests of equivalence that incorporate a heteroscedastic error term. It was found that the latter were more accurate than the Schuirmann test in detecting equivalence when sample sizes and variances were unequal.