Journal article
Profiting from pilot studies: Analysing mortality using Bayesian models with informative priors
WK Morris, PA Vesk, MA McCarthy
Basic and Applied Ecology | ELSEVIER GMBH, URBAN & FISCHER VERLAG | Published : 2013
Abstract
Pilot studies are often used to help design ecological studies. Ideally the pilot data are incorporated into the full-scale study data, but if the pilot study's results indicate a need for major changes to experimental design, then pooling pilot and full-scale study data is difficult. The default position is to disregard the preliminary data. But ignoring pilot study data after a more comprehensive study has been completed forgoes statistical power or costs more by sampling additional data equivalent to the pilot study's sample size. With Bayesian methods, pilot study data can be used as an informative prior for a model built from the full-scale study dataset. We demonstrate a Bayesian metho..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Libby Rumpff, Megan Watson, James Camac, Chris Jones, Rhiannon Apted, Warwick McCallum and Alex Thompson for help in the field. We also acknowledge the assistance of Carla Miles (Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority), Kate Hill (Department of Sustainability and Environment) and the land owners who allowed us to undertake this study on their properties. We also thank Bob O'hara, Rod Fensham, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. William K. Morris was funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award. This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP0985600) and the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority.