Department of Statistics, UCLA

When there is interest to study n chemicals using x dose levels each, factorial designs that require xn treatment groups have been put forward as one of the valuable statistical approaches for hazard assessment of chemical mixtures. Exemplary applications and cost-efficiency comparisons of full factorial designs and regular fractional factorial designs in toxicity studies can be found in Nesnow et al. (1995), Narotsky et al. (1995), and Groten et al. (1996,1997). We introduce nonregular fractional factorial designs and show their benefits using two studies reported in Groten et al. (1996). Study 1 shows nonregular designs can provide the same amount of information using 75% of the experimental costs required in a regular design. Study 2 demonstrates nonregular designs can additionally estimate some partially aliased effects, which cannot be done using regular designs. We also provide a statistical method to evaluate the quality of an assumption made by experts in Study 2 of Groten et al. (1996).