A PERMUTATION TEST FOR EFFECTS IN AN UNREPLICATED FACTORIAL DESIGN

A permutation test is proposed for examining the significance of effec ts in unreplicated factorial experiments. The procedure tests each eff ect with a separate sampling distribution using a test statistic that is equivalent to the optimal invariant decision rule of Birnbaum. The proposed test is more flexible than other methods proposed for the sam e situation because it requires no a priori assumptions regarding the underlying distribution of the data nor does it impose any practical r estriction on the number of potentially significant effects present.