Related papers: Simulation study of estimating between-study varia…
Methods for random-effects meta-analysis require an estimate of the between-study variance, $\tau^2$. The performance of estimators of $\tau^2$ (measured by bias and coverage) affects their usefulness in assessing heterogeneity of…
Random-effects meta-analysis requires an estimate of the between-study variance, $\tau^2$. We study methods of estimation of $\tau^2$ and its confidence interval in meta-analysis of odds ratio, and also the performance of related estimators…
Methods for random-effects meta-analysis require an estimate of the between-study variance, $\tau^2$. The performance of estimators of $\tau^2$ (measured by bias and coverage) affects their usefulness in assessing heterogeneity of…
When the individual studies assembled for a meta-analysis report means ($\mu_C$, $\mu_T$) for their treatment (T) and control (C) arms, but those data are on different scales or come from different instruments, the customary measure of…
A number of popular estimators of the between-study variance, $\tau^2$, are based on the Cochran's $Q$ statistic for testing heterogeneity in meta analysis. We introduce new point and interval estimators of $\tau^2$ for log-odds-ratio.…
We consider a three-level meta-analysis of standardized mean differences. The standard method of estimation uses inverse-variance weights and REML/PL estimation of variance components for the random effects. We introduce new moment-based…
A variety of problems in random-effects meta-analysis arise from the conventional $Q$ statistic, which uses estimated inverse-variance (IV) weights. In previous work on standardized mean difference and log-odds-ratio, we found superior…
Meta-analyses are commonly used to provide solid evidence across numerous studies. Traditional moment methods, such as the DerSimonian-Laird method, remain popular in spite of the availability of more accurate alternatives. While moment…
Meta-analysis aims to combine effect measures from several studies. For continuous outcomes, the most popular effect measures use simple or standardized differences in sample means. However, a number of applications focus on the absolute…
Random-effects models are frequently used to synthesise information from different studies in meta-analysis. While likelihood-based inference is attractive both in terms of limiting properties and of implementation, its application in…
For differences between means of continuous data from independent groups, the customary scale-free measure of effect is the standardized mean difference (SMD). To justify use of SMD, one should be reasonably confident that the group-level…
Random-effects models are frequently used to synthesise information from different studies in meta-analysis. While likelihood-based inference is attractive both in terms of limiting properties and of implementation, its application in…
Random-effects meta-analyses are used to combine evidence of treatment effects from multiple studies. Since treatment effects may vary across trials due to differences in study characteristics, heterogeneity in treatment effects between…
Random effects meta-analysis is a widely applied methodology to synthetize research findings of studies in a specific scientific question. Besides estimating the mean effect, an important aim of the meta-analysis is to summarize the…
BACKGROUND: Random-effects meta-analysis is commonly performed by first deriving an estimate of the between-study variation, the heterogeneity, and subsequently using this as the basis for combining results, i.e., for estimating the effect,…
Cochran's $Q$ statistic is routinely used for testing heterogeneity in meta-analysis. Its expected value is also used for estimation of between-study variance $\tau^2$. Cochran's $Q$, or $Q_{IV}$, uses estimated inverse-variance weights…
Random-effects meta-analyses are widely used for evidence synthesis in medical research. However, conventional methods based on large-sample approximations often exhibit poor performance in case of very few studies (e.g., 2 to 4), which is…
Random effects meta-analysis is widely used for synthesizing studies under the assumption that underlying effects come from a normal distribution. However, under certain conditions the use of alternative distributions might be more…
Traditional meta-analysis assumes that the effect sizes estimated in individual studies follow a Gaussian distribution. However, this distributional assumption is not always satisfied in practice, leading to potentially biased results. In…
The DerSimonian-Laird (DL) weighted average method has been widely used for estimation of a pooled effect size from an aggregated data meta-analysis study. It is mainly criticized for its underestimation of the standard error of the pooled…