392,145 papers found

Describes the application to community issues of the meta-analytic research strategies increasingly used in many field of psychology. First, we highlight the potential value of meta-analysis to community research. Second, we describe six major steps involved in conducting an effective meta-analysis. These steps include…

A meta-analysis of studies on preparation for medical procedures and pain evaluated the relative effects of sensory; procedural, and combined sensory-procedural preoperational information on coping outcomes. Results indicated that, in contrast to sensory information, procedural information provided no significant benef…

Has the introduction of continuous intrapartum fetal heart rate (F.H.R.) registration resulted in an increase of cesarean section (CS) rates? Our meta-analysis of literature published since 1970 reveals the weak intrinsic value of retrospective studies and the heterogeneity of randomised trials concerning this question…

Letter to the Editor-in-Chief in response to JOSPT article "Which Portion of Physiotherapy Treatments' Effect Is Not Attributable to the Specific Effects in People With Musculoskeletal Pain? A Meta-analysis of Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials" by Ezzatvar et al.

In this note, we clarify and prove the claim made Higgins et al. () that the design-by-treatment interaction model contains all possible loop inconsistency models. This claim provides a strong argument for using the design-by-treatment interaction model to describe loop inconsistencies in network meta-analysis. ©…

Various methods for statistical analysis of data are available to clinicians and researchers. Meta-analysis is a tool by which small, related studies are identified and, through systematic review, are combined into a common data pool for a single, larger population analysis. As with all statistical methods, there are i…

Meta-analysis with discrete outcomes is interpreted as the estimation (in one or two dimensions) of a non-parametric smooth latent distribution of event probabilities (or rates). A simple but efficient EM algorithm is presented. A fine grid is used and fast smoothing is done by penalized least squares. Data exploration…

A systematic review may encompass both odds ratios and mean differences in continuous outcomes. A separate meta-analysis of each type of outcome results in loss of information and may be misleading. It is shown that a ln(odds ratio) can be converted to effect size by dividing by 1.81. The validity of effect size, the e…

When summarizing studies in a meta-analysis, the methodological quality of the studies can vary widely. This variation is often described by assigning quality scores to studies. This paper presents a probability model for the effect of quality on a summary effect measure. The model motivates criteria used to assess qua…

Although it is increasingly common, meta-analysis is still a relatively new addition to the toolbox of research strategies. Partially because of its newness and partially because its early enthusiasts may have overstated its presumed contributions, a number of common misunderstandings have developed about the meta-anal…

We reviewed the factors influencing local control of potentially curable rectal cancer in 106 patients. There was improvement in stage-adjusted local control associated with increasing use of adjuvant radiation therapy. A meta-analysis of the English-language literature through 1988 also supported the effectiveness of…

Meta-analysis is the science of combining evidence from different studies, but traditional statistical techniques contain neither a formal definition nor a measure of evidence. It is argued in this paper that the log-likelihood ratio, as a measure of the "weight of evidence," can be a very useful tool in the meta-analy…

In this article, we counter some criticism regarding the desirability of performing meta-analysis in clinical research. These criticisms, we argue, are based mainly on current difficulties in deriving firm conclusions based on meta-analysis, resulting from poor methodology and reporting of primary studies. This is not…

An international conference of clinicians, clinical investigators and biostatisticians discussed meta-analysis in relation to clinical trials, i.e. the combination of data from separate studies for the purpose of obtaining information that cannot be derived from the individual studies. Meta-analysis can be a helpful to…