Interactive computer program for optimal designs of longitudinal cohort studies
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Establishing a Competing Risk Regression Nomogram Model for Survival Data
Published on: October 23, 2020
Fetene B Tekle1, Frans E S Tan, Martijn P F Berger
1University of Maastricht, Department of Methodology and Statistics, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. fetene.bekele@stat.unimaas.nl
Abstract:
Many large scale longitudinal cohort studies have been carried out or are ongoing in different fields of science. Such studies need a careful planning to obtain the desired quality of results with the available resources. In the past, a number of researches have been performed on optimal designs for longitudinal studies. However, there was no computer program yet available to help researchers to plan their longitudinal cohort design in an optimal way. A new interactive computer program for the optimization of designs of longitudinal cohort studies is therefore presented. The computer program helps users to identify the optimal cohort design with an optimal number of repeated measurements per subject and an optimal allocations of time points within a given study period. Further, users can compute the loss in relative efficiencies of any other alternative design compared to the optimal one. The computer program is described and illustrated using a practical example.
Related Concept Videos
Study Designs in Epidemiology
Observational studies are those where the researcher does not intervene but rather observes natural variations. They include cross-sectional, cohort, and case-control studies.
Study Design in Statistics
Does aspirin reduce the risk of heart attacks? Is one brand of fertilizer more effective at growing roses than another? Is fatigue as dangerous to a driver as the influence of alcohol? Questions like these are answered using randomized experiments with proper...
Longitudinal Studies
Longitudinal Research
Statistical Methods for Analyzing Epidemiological Data
Experimental Designs