Critique of enhanced power claimed for Quasi-ANCOVA and Dual-Centered ANCOVA
Two related methods, Quasi-ANCOVA and Dual-Centered ANCOVA, have recently been suggested as a way to get greater power when analyzing data from a before and after study. Both methods use group-mean centering where the groups are the treatment and comparison groups. Group-mean centering creates a generated regressor problem. When the estimated standard errors are corrected for the generated regressor problem, there is no longer any gain in power. The corrected Quasi-ANCOVA estimates are identical to those from ANOVA and the corrected Dual-Centered ANCOVA estimates are identical to those from the differences model. These conclusions are derived analytically and also verified using a Monte Carlo simulation.
Authors
- Hua Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8795-1997)
- Robert E. Larzelere (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2822-3735)
- B. Wade Brorsen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7109-7717)
Institutions
- Oklahoma State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PLoS ONE
- Published
- 2025-01-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317860
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Statistical Methods and Inference
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.26
Funders
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture
- Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development