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To be convincing, an observational block design must demonstrate that an ostensible treatment effect is not actually a consequence of small or moderate unmeasured biases of treatment assignment in the absence of a treatment effect. It is known that weighting to ignore blocks with a small range of responses increases the ability to distinguish a treatment effect from a bias in treatment assignment\u2014that is, it increases the design sensitivity. Here, it is shown that a new tactic further increases design sensitivity. The new tactic involves a conditional statistic, such that blocks with moderately large ranges are considered conditionally given that the treated individual has either the largest or smallest response in the block. The new tactic is explored: (i) in terms of an asymptotic measure, the design sensitivity, (ii) in simulation of the power of a sensitivity analysis in finite samples, and (iii) in an example. Adaptive inference is briefly discussed. An R package weightedRank implements the method, contains the data, and reproduces the empirical results.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/jrsssb\/qkaf007","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,3]],"date-time":"2025-02-03T15:22:11Z","timestamp":1738596131000},"page":"1085-1099","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["A conditioning tactic that increases design sensitivity in observational block designs"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"87","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0872-1403","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Paul R","family":"Rosenbaum","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Statistics and Data Science, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , 265 South 37th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-1686 ,","place":["USA"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B1","first-page":"158","article-title":"Relatively optimal combinations of test statistics","volume":"5","author":"Berk","year":"1978","journal-title":"Scandinavian Journal of Statistics"},{"issue":"4","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"783","DOI":"10.2307\/3315916","article-title":"Confidence curves and improved exact confidence intervals for discrete distributions","volume":"28","author":"Blaker","year":"2000","journal-title":"Canadian Journal of Statistics"},{"issue":"4","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3507","DOI":"10.1214\/24-AOAS1949","article-title":"A new design for observational studies applied to the study of the effects of high school football on cognition late in life","volume":"18","author":"Brumberg","year":"2024","journal-title":"Annals of Applied Statistics"},{"issue":"3","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"261","DOI":"10.2307\/2527916","article-title":"Analysis of covariance","volume":"13","author":"Cochran","year":"1957","journal-title":"Biometrics"},{"issue":"1","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"189","DOI":"10.2307\/2531906","article-title":"Locally most powerful tests for detecting treatment effects when only a subset of patients can be expected to respond to treatment","volume":"44","author":"Conover","year":"1988","journal-title":"Biometrics"},{"issue":"3","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"545","DOI":"10.1111\/1467-9868.00249","article-title":"Asymptotic separability in sensitivity analysis","volume":"62","author":"Gastwirth","year":"2000","journal-title":"Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B"},{"key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1161","DOI":"10.1093\/jnci\/32.5.1161","article-title":"Smoking in relation to mortality and morbidity","volume":"32","author":"Hammond","year":"1964","journal-title":"Journal of the National Cancer Institute"},{"issue":"3","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"482","DOI":"10.1111\/rssb.12424","article-title":"Increasing power for observational studies of aberrant response: An adaptive approach","volume":"83","author":"Heng","year":"2021","journal-title":"Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B"},{"issue":"2","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"381","DOI":"10.1093\/biomet\/asaa072","article-title":"The uniform general signed rank test and its design sensitivity","volume":"108","author":"Howard","year":"2021","journal-title":"Biometrika"},{"issue":"2","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"353","DOI":"10.1093\/biomet\/asz003","article-title":"Integrating the evidence from evidence factors in observational studies","volume":"106","author":"Karmakar","year":"2019","journal-title":"Biometrika"},{"key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B11","volume-title":"Nonparametrics","author":"Lehmann","year":"1975"},{"issue":"1","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"83","DOI":"10.1200\/JCO.2017.76.1155","article-title":"Alcohol and cancer: A statement of the American society of clinical oncology","volume":"36","author":"LoConte","year":"2018","journal-title":"Journal of Clinical Oncology"},{"issue":"380","key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"901","DOI":"10.1080\/01621459.1982.10477905","article-title":"Inference based on simple rank step score statistics","volume":"77","author":"Markowski","year":"1982","journal-title":"Journal of the American Statistical Association"},{"key":"2025091915465771400_qkaf007-B14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"465","DOI":"10.1214\/ss\/1177012031","article-title":"On the application of probability theory to agricultural experiments. 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