Methods for calculating confidence and credible intervals for the residual between-study variance in random effects meta-regression models.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Meta-regression is becoming increasingly used to model study level covariate effects. However this type of statistical analysis presents many difficulties and challenges. Here two methods for calculating confidence intervals for the magnitude of the residual between-study variance in random effects meta-regression models are developed. A further suggestion for calculating credible intervals using informative prior distributions for the residual between-study variance is presented.

Methods

Two recently proposed and, under the assumptions of the random effects model, exact methods for constructing confidence intervals for the between-study variance in random effects meta-analyses are extended to the meta-regression setting. The use of Generalised Cochran heterogenei

SUBMITTER: Jackson D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4160560 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature