Practical Implications of Equating Equivalence Tests: Reply to Campbell and Gustafson (2022)

Linde et al. (2021) compared the “two one-sided tests” the “highest density interval—region of practical equivalence”, and the “interval Bayes factor” approaches to establishing equivalence in terms of power and Type I error rate using typical decision thresholds. They found that the interval Bayes factor approach exhibited a higher power but also a higher Type I error rate than the other approaches. In response, Campbell and Gustafson (2022) showed that the performances of the three approaches can approximate one another when they are calibrated to have the same Type I error rate. In this article, we argue that these results have little bearing on how these approaches are used in practice; a concrete example is used to highlight this important point.