How to conduct meta-analysis: a basic tutorial
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Epidemiology, Evidence Based Medicine, Health Policy, Public Health, Statistics
- Keywords
- epidemiology, methods, meta-analysis, data-analysis, tutorial
- Copyright
- © 2017 Basu
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. How to conduct meta-analysis: a basic tutorial. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2978v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2978v1
Abstract
Meta analysis refers to a process of integration of the results of many studies to arrive at evidence syn- thesis. Meta analysis is similar to systematic review; however, in addition to narrative summary that is conducted in systematic review, in meta analysis, the analysts also numerically pool the results of the studies and arrive at a summary estimate. In this paper, we discuss the key steps of conducting a meta analysis. We will discuss the steps of a simple meta-analysis with a demonstration of the key steps based on a published paper on meta-analysis and systematic review of the effectiveness of salt restricted diet on blood pressure control. This paper is a basic introduction to the process of meta-analysis. In subsequent papers in this series, we will show how you can conduct meta-analysis of diagnostic and screening studies, network meta analyses, and those of diagnostic and screening studies.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.