Quantification of prior impact in terms of effective current sample size

Abstract

Bayesian methods allow borrowing of historical information through prior distributions. The concept of prior effective sample size (prior ESS) facilitates quantification and communication of such prior information by equating it to a sample size. Prior information can arise from historical observations; thus, the traditional approach identifies the ESS with such a historical sample size. However, this measure is independent of newly observed data, and thus would not capture an actual "loss of information" induced by the prior in case of prior-data conflict. We build on a recent work to relate prior impact to the number of (virtual) samples from the current data model and introduce the effective current sample size (ECSS) of a prior, tailored to the application in Bayesian clinical trial designs. Special emphasis is put on robust mixture, power, and commensurate priors. We apply the approach to an adaptive design in which the number of recruited patients is adjusted depending on the effective sample size at an interim analysis. We argue that the ECSS is the appropriate measure in this case, as the aim is to save current (as opposed to historical) patients from recruitment. Furthermore, the ECSS can help overcome lack of consensus in the ESS assessment of mixture priors and can, more broadly, provide further insights into the impact of priors. An R package accompanies the paper.

Keywords: Bayesian adaptive clinical trial design; prior effective sample size; prior elicitation; prior information; prior-data conflict; robust priors.