Tests to Detect Changes in Micro-Flora Composition;

Good's lambda test, a permutation test used to detect the changes of microorganism composition under two pathological conditions, has been quite popular for studying the micro-flora responsible for periodontal disease. A vast number of different micro-flora in the mouth renders the traditional chi-square test inapplicable. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the power of this test so that the sample size can be determined at the design stage. The robustness of this test and its comparison to two other intuitive tests are also presented. It is found that a permutation test based on likelihood ratio is more powerful than the lambda test in our simulated cases.