articleJournal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A (Statistics in Society)Jul 24, 2008BRONZE OA

A Re-Evaluation of Random-Effects Meta-Analysis

JPJulian P. T. HigginsSGSimon G. ThompsonDJDavid J. Spiegelhalter

Medical Research Council

PubMed
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Abstract

Meta-analysis in the presence of unexplained heterogeneity is frequently undertaken by using a random-effects model, in which the effects underlying different studies are assumed to be drawn from a normal distribution. Here we discuss the justification and interpretation of such models, by addressing in turn the aims of estimation, prediction and hypothesis testing. A particular issue that we consider is the distinction between inference on the mean of the random-effects distribution and inference on the whole distribution. We suggest that random-effects meta-analyses as currently conducted often fail to provide the key results, and we investigate the extent to which distribution-free, classical and Bayesian…

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Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Bayesian probability
  • Inference
  • Random effects model
  • Meta-analysis
  • Computer science
  • A priori and a posteriori
  • Bayesian inference
  • Econometrics
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