Incomplete block designs for comparing treatments wth a control: General theory

In this paper we develop a theory of optimal incomplete block designs for comparing several treatments with a control. This class of designs is appropriate for comparing simultaneously p ≥ 2 test treatments with a control treatment (the so-called multiple comparisons with a control (MCC) problem) when the observations are taken in incomplete blocks of common size k < p + 1. For this problem we propose a new general class of incomplete block designs that are balanced with respect to (wrt) test treatments. We shall use the abbreviation BTIB to refer to such designs. We study their structure and give some methods of construction. A procedure for making exact joint confidence statements for this multiple comparisons problem is described. By using a new concept of admissibility of designs, it is shown how “inferior” designs can be eliminated from consideration, and attention limited to a small class of BTIB designs that can be constructed from so-called generator designs in the minimal complete class of such designs. Some open problems concerning construction of BTIB designs are posed.