A Method for Comparing Profiles of Repeated Measurements

A method for the comparison of profiles of repeated measurements is described which is based on Gabriel's ante‐dependence covariance structure. The method is intended for experiments in which no specific features of the profiles are known to be of interest a priori. The establishment of the appropriate order of ante‐dependence structure is discussed and a test statistic for the overall comparison of profiles under the structure is defined. It is shown how this statistic can be decomposed into statistically independent components which can be used to investigate the form of the differences among profiles. In particular the use of these components is proposed as an improvement over the practice of calculating a separate t‐test for each time of measurement. All the statistics described can be constructed from standard analysis of covariance sums of squares.