The use of strain rank orders in assessing equivalence of techniques

In situations where effects of previous testing make it impossible to compare putativety equivalent forms of a behavioral test, inbred strains may be useful. To a considerable extent, animals from an inbred strain represent replicate individuals. Different naive samples from the same strain may be tested in different forms of a test. There is presumptive evidence that the two forms arc assessing similar functions if samples from different strains that differ on the behavior give consistent ordinal rankings. An illustration is given of the use of this approach in assessing methods of measuring alcohol preference in mice.