Frontiers in Public Health (Oct 2013)

Improved Confidence Intervals of a Small Probability From Pooled Testing With Misclassification

  • Chunling eLiu,
  • Aiyi eLiu,
  • Bo eZhang,
  • Zhiwei eZhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2013.00039
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1

Abstract

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This article concerns construction of confidence intervals of theprevalence of a rare disease using Dorfman's pooled testingprocedure when the disease status is classified with an imperfectbiomarker. Such an interval can be derived by converting aconfidence interval of the probability that a group is testedpositive. The Wald confidence intervals based on normalapproximation are shown to be inefficient in terms of coverageprobability, even for relatively large number of pools. A fewalternatives are proposed and their performance is investigated interms of coverage probability and length of intervals.

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