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Provides the Critical Value for the Scheffé Procedure

Usage

cv_scheffe(alpha_level, df_numerator, df_denominator, verbose = TRUE)

Arguments

alpha_level

Type I error rate (i.e., the family-wise false-positive rate).

df_numerator

The numerator degrees of freedom (typically the number of groups minus 1, \(k - 1\), in a one-way ANOVA).

df_denominator

The denominator (error) degrees of freedom (typically \(N - k\) in a one-way ANOVA).

verbose

Provides extra information about areas under the curve.

Value

Returns the critical value in a output style (a data.frame with one row per critical value, following the format used by cv_t and cv_tukey_hsd).

Details

The Scheffé critical value protects the family-wise error rate for the simultaneous test of any contrast (or family of contrasts) in a fixed-effects ANOVA, including data-driven contrasts selected after looking at the data. It is therefore the most conservative of the standard procedures.

The critical value, on the scale of a t-statistic, is $$t_{\mathrm{crit}}^{\mathrm{Scheffe}} = \sqrt{(k-1)\, F_{1-\alpha,\,k-1,\,df_{\mathrm{denominator}}}},$$ so that a contrast \(\hat\psi\) with standard error \(\mathit{SE}_{\hat\psi}\) is declared significant when \(|\hat\psi/\mathit{SE}_{\hat\psi}| > t_{\mathrm{crit}}^{\mathrm{Scheffe}}\). The corresponding simultaneous confidence interval is \(\hat\psi \pm t_{\mathrm{crit}}^{\mathrm{Scheffe}} \cdot \mathit{SE}_{\hat\psi}\).

Like the Studentized range distribution underlying Tukey HSD, the Scheffé reference is one-sided (the underlying F statistic is non-negative), so alpha_level is not split between two tails.

The Scheffé critical value is a function of a univariate F quantile, which base R supplies through qf, so unlike cv_dunnett and cv_smm this function needs no multivariate distribution machinery. Scheffé's procedure earns its simultaneous protection over the infinite family of all possible contrasts by projecting onto the overall F test rather than by integrating a multivariate t density; that is why a single univariate quantile suffices and the mvtnorm package is not required here. Maxwell, Delaney, and Kelley (2027, Chapter 5) develop the Scheffé method as the procedure for arbitrary contrasts within the multiple-comparisons problem.

References

Scheffe, H. (1953). A method for judging all contrasts in the analysis of variance. Biometrika, 40, 87–104.

Maxwell, S. E., Delaney, H. D., & Kelley, K. (2027). Designing experiments and analyzing data: A model comparison perspective (4th ed.). Routledge. (See Chapter 5 on the multiple-comparisons problem, where the Scheffé method for arbitrary contrasts is developed.)

Author

Ken Kelley kkelley@nd.edu

Examples

# Following the arbitrary-contrasts setting of Maxwell, Delaney, and Kelley
# (2027, Chapter 5): a one-way ANOVA with k = 4 groups and 36 error degrees
# of freedom (e.g., n = 10 per group). The Scheffé critical value protects
# the family-wise error rate over any contrast, including contrasts chosen
# after looking at the data.
cv_scheffe(alpha_level = .05, df_numerator = 3, df_denominator = 36)
#>  term     value area_less area_greater
#>  upper_cv 2.93  0.95      0.05        

# The price of that protection is a larger multiplier than the unadjusted
# t critical value at the same error degrees of freedom:
cv_t(alpha_level = .05, df = 36)
#>  term     value area_less area_greater
#>  lower_cv -2.03 0.025     0.975       
#>  upper_cv 2.03  0.975     0.025