Practical Meta Analysis

"This book offers readers the best of both worlds: technical sophistication coupled with user-friendly, practical information for doing meta-analysis." -- Page 4 of cover.

What research designs and methodological features qualify a study for meta-analysis and which disqualify it? What types of research reports are appropriate for the meta-analysis? What is the cultural and linguistic range of the studies to be included? By integrating and translating the current methodological and statistical work into a practical guide, the authors address these questions to provide readers with a state-of-the-art introduction to the various approaches to doing meta-analysis.

Doing Meta-Analysis with R: A Hands-On Guide serves as an accessible introduction on how meta-analyses can be conducted in R. Essential steps for meta-analysis are covered, including calculation and pooling of outcome measures, forest plots, heterogeneity diagnostics, subgroup analyses, meta-regression, methods to control for publication bias, risk of bias assessments and plotting tools. Advanced but highly relevant topics such as network meta-analysis, multi-three-level meta-analyses, Bayesian meta-analysis approaches and SEM meta-analysis are also covered. A companion R package, dmetar, is introduced at the beginning of the guide. It contains data sets and several helper functions for the meta and metafor package used in the guide. The programming and statistical background covered in the book are kept at a non-expert level, making the book widely accessible. Features • Contains two introductory chapters on how to set up an R environment and do basic imports/manipulations of meta-analysis data, including exercises • Describes statistical concepts clearly and concisely before applying them in R • Includes step-by-step guidance through the coding required to perform meta-analyses, and a companion R package for the book

This title provides step-by-step directions for how to conduct a meta-study, as well as recommendations for tools and standards for the application of this approach.

The subject of the book is advanced statistical analyses for quantitative research synthesis (meta-analysis), and selected practical issues relating to research synthesis that are not covered in detail in the many existing introductory books on research synthesis (or meta-analysis). Complex statistical issues are arising more frequently as the primary research that is summarized in quantitative syntheses itself becomes more complex, and as researchers who are conducting meta-analyses become more ambitious in the questions they wish to address. Also as researchers have gained more experience in conducting research syntheses, several key issues have persisted and now appear fundamental to the enterprise of summarizing research. Specifically the book describes multivariate analyses for several indices commonly used in meta-analysis (e.g., correlations, effect sizes, proportions and/or odds ratios), will outline how to do power analysis for meta-analysis (again for each of the different kinds of study outcome indices), and examines issues around research quality and research design and their roles in synthesis. For each of the statistical topics we will examine the different possible statistical models (i.e., fixed, random, and mixed models) that could be adopted by a researcher. In dealing with the issues of study quality and research design it covers a number of specific topics that are of broad concern to research synthesists. In many fields a current issue is how to make sense of results when studies using several different designs appear in a research literature (e.g., Morris & Deshon, 1997, 2002). In education and other social sciences a critical aspect of this issue is how one might incorporate qualitative (e.g., case study) research within a synthesis. In medicine, related issues concern whether and how to summarize observational studies, and whether they should be combined with randomized controlled trials (or even if they should be combined at all). For each topic, included is a worked example (e.g., for the statistical analyses) and/or a detailed description of a published research synthesis that deals with the practical (non-statistical) issues covered.

A practical guide to network meta-analysis with examples and code In the evaluation of healthcare, rigorous methods of quantitative assessment are necessary to establish which interventions are effective and cost-effective. Often a single study will not provide the answers and it is desirable to synthesise evidence from multiple sources, usually randomised controlled trials. This book takes an approach to evidence synthesis that is specifically intended for decision making when there are two or more treatment alternatives being evaluated, and assumes that the purpose of every synthesis is to answer the question "for this pre-identified population of patients, which treatment is 'best'?" A comprehensive, coherent framework for network meta-analysis (mixed treatment comparisons) is adopted and estimated using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods implemented in the freely available software WinBUGS. Each chapter contains worked examples, exercises, solutions and code that may be adapted by readers to apply to their own analyses. This book can be used as an introduction to evidence synthesis and network meta-analysis, its key properties and policy implications. Examples and advanced methods are also presented for the more experienced reader. Methods used throughout this book can be applied consistently: model critique and checking for evidence consistency are emphasised. Methods are based on technical support documents produced for NICE Decision Support Unit, which support the NICE Methods of Technology Appraisal. Code presented is also the basis for the code used by the ISPOR Task Force on Indirect Comparisons. Includes extensive carefully worked examples, with thorough explanations of how to set out data for use in WinBUGS and how to interpret the output. Network Meta-Analysis for Decision Making will be of interest to decision makers, medical statisticians, health economists, and anyone involved in Health Technology Assessment including the pharmaceutical industry.

The Fifth Edition of Harris Cooper′s bestselling text offers practical advice on how to conduct a synthesis of research in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. The book is written in plain language with four running examples drawn from psychology, education, and health science. With ample coverage of literature searching and the technical aspects of meta-analysis, this one-of-a-kind book applies the basic principles of sound data gathering to the task of producing a comprehensive assessment of existing research.