Comprehensive comparisons of major sequential design procedures for sensitivity testing

The main goal of a good sensitivity testing procedure is to quickly determine at which stimulus level a specified fraction of test items fail. Based on a previous study, two procedures, D-optimal and 3pod, appear to be most promising. In this paper we expand on this work, first by considering other variants of the two procedures. A related procedure to D-optimal, called Sen-Test, is examined and shown to be superior to D-optimal in a simulation study. A revised version of 3pod, dubbed 3pod2.0, is proposed. A comprehensive simulation study to compare Sen-Test, 3pod and 3pod2.0 is conducted. Based on this study, we draw some concluding remarks on their relative performance and make recommendations.