Jackson, D;
Turner, R;
Rhodes, K;
Viechtbauer, W;
(2014)
Methods for calculating confidence and credible intervals for the residual between-study variance in random effects meta-regression models.
BMC Medical Research Methodology
, 14
(1)
, Article 103. 10.1186/1471-2288-14-103.
Preview |
Text
Jackson_et_al-2014-BMCMedResMeth.pdf - Published Version Download (414kB) | Preview |
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 heterogeneity statistics is extended to the meta-regression setting and a Newton-Raphson procedure is developed to implement the Q profile method for meta-analysis and meta-regression. WinBUGS is used to implement informative priors for the residual between-study variance in the context of Bayesian meta-regressions. Results: Results are obtained for two contrasting examples, where the first example involves a binary covariate and the second involves a continuous covariate. Intervals for the residual between-study variance are wide for both examples. Conclusions: Statistical methods, and R computer software, are available to compute exact confidence intervals for the residual between-study variance under the random effects model for meta-regression. These frequentist methods are almost as easily implemented as their established counterparts for meta-analysis. Bayesian meta-regressions are also easily performed by analysts who are comfortable using WinBUGS. Estimates of the residual between-study variance in random effects meta-regressions should be routinely reported and accompanied by some measure of their uncertainty. Confidence and/or credible intervals are well-suited to this purpose.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Methods for calculating confidence and credible intervals for the residual between-study variance in random effects meta-regression models |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2288-14-103 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-14-103 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2014 Jackson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| Keywords: | Heterogeneity, Informative priors, Meta-regression, Quadratic forms |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology > MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10056394 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
