Estimating the sample mean and standard deviation from the sample size, median, range and/or interquartile range.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In systematic reviews and meta-analysis, researchers often pool the results of the sample mean and standard deviation from a set of similar clinical trials. A number of the trials, however, reported the study using the median, the minimum and maximum values, and/or the first and third quartiles. Hence, in order to combine results, one may have to estimate the sample mean and standard deviation for such trials.

Methods

In this paper, we propose to improve the existing literature in several directions. First, we show that the sample standard deviation estimation in Hozo et al.'s method (BMC Med Res Methodol 5:13, 2005) has some serious limitations and is always less satisfactory in practice. Inspired by this, we propose a new estimation method by incorporating the s

SUBMITTER: Wan X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4383202 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature