Locally Optimal Experimental Designs for Mixed Responses Models

Bivariate responses that comprise mixtures of binary and continuous variables are common in medical, engineering, and other scientific fields. There exist many works concerning the analysis of such mixed data. However, the research on optimal designs for this type of experiments is still scarce. The joint mixed responses model that is considered here involves a mixture of ordinary linear models for the continuous response and a generalized linear model for the binary response. Using the complete class approach, tighter upper bounds on the number of support points required for finding locally optimal designs are derived for the mixed responses models studied in this work.

In the first part of this dissertation, a theoretical result was developed to facilitate the search of locally symmetric optimal designs for mixed responses models with one continuous covariate. Then, the study was extended to mixed responses models that include group effects. Two types of mixed responses models with group effects were investigated. The first type includes models having no common parameters across subject group, and the second type of models allows some common parameters (e.g., a common slope) across groups. In addition to complete class results, an efficient algorithm (PSO-FM) was proposed to search for the A- and D-optimal designs. Finally, the first-order mixed responses model is extended to a type of a quadratic mixed responses model with a quadratic polynomial predictor placed in its linear model.