A compound with a desired size of effects in an HTS is called a hit. The process of selecting hits is called hit selection. The analytic methods for hit selection in screens without replicates (usually in primary screens) differ from those with replicates (usually in confirmatory screens). For example, the z-score method is suitable for screens without replicates whereas the t-statistic is suitable for screens with replicates. The calculation of SSMD for screens without replicates also differs from that for screens with replicates
For hit selection in primary screens without replicates, the easily interpretable ones are average fold change, mean difference, percent inhibition, and percent activity. However, they do not capture data variability effectively. The z-score method or SSMD, which can capture data variability based on an assumption that every compound has the same variability as a negative reference in the screens.
However, outliers are common in HTS experiments, and methods such as z-score are sensitive to outliers and can be problematic. As a consequence, robust methods such as the z*-score method, SSMD*, B-score method, and quantile-based method have been proposed and adopted for hit selection.
In a screen with replicates, we can directly estimate variability for each compound; as a consequence, we should use SSMD or t-statistic that does not rely on the strong assumption that the z-score and z*-score rely on. One issue with the use of t-statistic and associated p-values is that they are affected by both sample size and effect size.
They come from testing for no mean difference, and thus are not designed to measure the size of compound effects. For hit selection, the major interest is the size of effect in a tested compound. SSMD directly assesses the size of effects.
SSMD has also been shown to be better than other commonly used effect sizes.
The population value of SSMD is comparable across experiments and, thus, we can use the same cutoff for the population value of SSMD to measure the size of compound effects