A Simulation Study of Multiple Comparisons with the Average under Heteroscedasticity

In many experimental situations, the average treatment performance within its own group is used as a benchmark to be compared with each individual treatment. Multiple comparison procedures with the average (MCA) are thus proposed. A simulation comparison study of the traditional MCA, the single-stage MCA and the two-stage MCA for normal distribution under heteroscedasticity is investigated by the Monte-Carlo techniques in this paper. It was found that the two-stage MCA has shorter confidence length than the single-stage MCA for most cases and it is also more robust for non-normal distributions. Therefore, the two-stage MCA is recommended. But when the additional samples at the second stage could be costly, the data-analysis oriented single-stage MCA can be used. A biometrical example to illustrate the single-stage MCA and the two-stage MCA with equal confidence length is also given in this article.