A new noninferiority test for independent dichotomous variables based on a shrinkage proportion estimator.

A new noninferiority test for the difference between two independent proportions is presented. The test is based on a Wald-type statistic in which maximum likelihood estimators and a type of shrinkage estimator are used to estimate proportions. This new test was compared with another Wald-type test that has been shown to behave well in terms of test size and power. For the comparison, the behavior of the new test, in terms of its size and power, was analyzed over several configurations. While the two tests exhibited similar behavior, the new test is easier to implement and thus constitutes a practical alternative.