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.

优质灵敏度测试流程的核心目标，在于快速确定在何种刺激水平下，指定比例的受试样本会出现失效情况。基于既往研究，D最优（D-optimal）与3pod两种测试流程展现出极具潜力的应用前景。本文基于该研究进行拓展，首先针对这两种流程的其他变体展开探讨。其中，与D最优流程相关的Sen-Test（Sen-Test）被纳入研究范畴，并经仿真实验证实其性能优于D最优流程。此外，本文还提出了3pod的修订版本，命名为3pod2.0。随后，本文开展了一项全面的仿真实验，对Sen-Test、3pod以及3pod2.0三种流程进行对比分析。基于该实验结果，本文针对三种流程的相对性能给出总结性评述，并提出针对性建议。