Kreara

Wilcoxon Signed Rank test

Compiled by Sreedevi Menon

As part of the efficacy analysis of a recent Phase III study , it was planned to determine the significant difference in efficacy of treatments over the weeks. Each treatment group was analyzed separately. The paired t-test was employed to carry out the analysis on the parametric data.The Wilcoxon Signed Rank test was used for analysis of efficacy of treatments with respect to non-parametric data. The null hypothesis was that in the underlying population of differences among pairs the median difference is equal to 0. The alternate hypothesis may be one sided or two sided.

In SAS, this test is performed using the proc univariate procedure. Before applying the procedure, the difference between the value of parameter at the two time points that are to be compared (usually pre and post dose values) has to be computed. This difference is then defined in the “var” statement of the procedure. The syntax is as followed

ods output BasicMeasures= _A TestsforLocation= _B
proc univariate data= eff_data;
var diff;
run;
ods output close;

The output will contain p-value corresponding to Student’s t, Sign and Signed Rank tests. The p-value corresponding to the signed rank test will be considered. Further, For a 1-sided p-value, we would divide the 2-sided p-value by 2.The ‘ods output statement’ is used to extract descriptive statistics and the p value to two different datasets by using the as shown in the above example