A confidence interval robust to publication bias for random-effects meta-analysis of few studies.
between-trial heterogeneity
confidence interval
coverage probability
meta-analysis
publication bias
Journal
Research synthesis methods
ISSN: 1759-2887
Titre abrégé: Res Synth Methods
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101543738
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Sep 2021
Sep 2021
Historique:
revised:
02
02
2021
received:
13
10
2020
accepted:
04
02
2021
pubmed:
13
2
2021
medline:
29
10
2021
entrez:
12
2
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
In meta-analyses including only few studies, the estimation of the between-study heterogeneity is challenging. Furthermore, the assessment of publication bias is difficult as standard methods such as visual inspection or formal hypothesis tests in funnel plots do not provide adequate guidance. Previously, Henmi and Copas (Statistics in Medicine 2010, 29: 2969-2983) proposed a confidence interval for the overall effect in random-effects meta-analysis that is robust to publication bias to some extent. As is evident from their simulations, the confidence intervals have improved coverage compared with standard methods. To our knowledge, the properties of their method have never been assessed for meta-analyses including fewer than five studies. In this manuscript, we propose a variation of the method by Henmi and Copas employing an improved estimator of the between-study heterogeneity, in particular when dealing with few studies only. In a simulation study, the proposed method is compared to several competitors. Overall, we found that our method outperforms the others in terms of coverage probabilities.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Meta-Analysis
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
674-679Informations de copyright
© 2021 The Authors. Research Synthesis Methods published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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