B0328
Title: Designing experiments on networks: An agricultural field experiment
Authors: Vasiliki Koutra - King's College London (United Kingdom) [presenting]
Abstract: The design of experiments provides a formal framework for the collection of data to aid decision making. When such experiments are performed on connected units linked through a network, the resulting design and analysis are more complex; e.g. is the observed response from a given unit due to the direct effect of the treatment applied to that unit, or the result of a network, or viral, effect arising from treatments applied to connected units. We propose a new method of constructing efficient designs with complex blocking structures and network effects, and we illustrate it in an agricultural field experiment. We consider a field trial running at Rothamsted Research, and we compare different optimal designs under different models, including the commonly used designs in such situations. We show that designs that ignore the network structure may lead to poor estimates of the differences between treatment effects.
