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Heterogeneity and Meta-Regression

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Meta-Analysis with R

Part of the book series: Use R! ((USE R))

Abstract

Various aspects of statistical heterogeneity have been introduced briefly in previous chapters. We now review and develop these ideas and describe the connection between subgroup analysis and meta-regression.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The test statistic H is also printed in Fig. 2.2, however, it is rarely used in meta-analysis.

  2. 2.

    Super- and sub-script “\(\star \)” denote calculations based on the assumption of a common between-study variance across subgroups.

  3. 3.

    We could have used list element mc3s1$df.Q instead of mc3s1$k-1.

  4. 4.

    Alternatively, the command update(mc3s, tau.preset=sqrt(tau2.common)) could be used—see Sect. 2.5

  5. 5.

    Actually, using command round(mc3s.mr$tau2, 4) would print the value 0.0024.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Medical Biometry and Statistics, Medical Center – University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Guido Schwarzer & Gerta Rücker

  2. MRC Clinical Trials Unit, London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    James R. Carpenter

Authors
  1. Guido Schwarzer
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  2. James R. Carpenter
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  3. Gerta Rücker
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Schwarzer, G., Carpenter, J.R., Rücker, G. (2015). Heterogeneity and Meta-Regression. In: Meta-Analysis with R. Use R!. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21416-0_4

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