Pairwise Multiple Comparisons in Repeated Measures Designs

Five methods of performing pairwise multiple comparisons in repeated measures designs were investigated. Tukey's Wholly Significant Difference (WSD) test, recommended by most experimental design texts, requires that all differences between pairs of means have a common variance. However, this assumption is equivalent to the sphericity condition that is necessary and sufficient for the validity of the mixed-model approach to the omnibus test. Monte Carlo methods revealed that Tukey's WSD leads to an inflated alpha level when the sphericity assumption is not met. Consideration of both Type I and Type II error rates found in the simulated conditions for the five procedures suggests that a Bonferroni method utilizing a separate error term for each comparison should be employed.