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Modelling study quality in meta‐analysis
Author(s) -
Tritchler David
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0258(19990830)18:16<2135::aid-sim183>3.0.co;2-5
Subject(s) - automatic summarization , computer science , quality (philosophy) , measure (data warehouse) , set (abstract data type) , meta analysis , data mining , statistics , econometrics , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology , programming language , medicine
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 quality, and can be used to incorporate quality into the calculation of a summary effect. We derive a number of summarization methods and compare them for simulated data and an actual set of studies. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.