Journal ArticleDOI
Bayesian approaches to random-effects meta-analysis: a comparative study
TLDR
It is described how a full Bayesian analysis can deal with unresolved issues, such as the choice between fixed- and random-effects models, the choice of population distribution in a random- effects analysis, the treatment of small studies and extreme results, and incorporation of study-specific covariates.Abstract:
Current methods for meta-analysis still leave a number of unresolved issues, such as the choice between fixed- and random-effects models, the choice of population distribution in a random-effects analysis, the treatment of small studies and extreme results, and incorporation of study-specific covariates. We describe how a full Bayesian analysis can deal with these and other issues in a natural way, illustrated by a recent published example that displays a number of problems. Such analyses are now generally available using the BUGS implementation of Markov chain Monte Carlo numerical integration techniques. Appropriate proper prior distributions are derived, and sensitivity analysis to a variety of prior assumptions carried out. Current methods are briefly summarized and compared to the full Bayes analysis.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Quantifying heterogeneity in a meta‐analysis
TL;DR: It is concluded that H and I2, which can usually be calculated for published meta-analyses, are particularly useful summaries of the impact of heterogeneity, and one or both should be presented in publishedMeta-an analyses in preference to the test for heterogeneity.
Book
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
Julian P T Higgins,Sally Green +1 more
TL;DR: The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions is the official document that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions.
Journal ArticleDOI
How should meta-regression analyses be undertaken and interpreted?
TL;DR: The examples considered in this paper show the tension between the scientific rationale for using meta-regression and the difficult interpretative problems to which such analyses are prone.
Journal ArticleDOI
Impact of formal continuing medical education: do conferences, workshops, rounds, and other traditional continuing education activities change physician behavior or health care outcomes?
Dave Davis,Mary Ann O'Brien,Nick Freemantle,Fredric M. Wolf,Paul E. Mazmanian,Anne Taylor-Vaisey +5 more
TL;DR: The data show some evidence that interactive CME sessions that enhance participant activity and provide the opportunity to practice skills can effect change in professional practice and, on occasion, health care outcomes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Quantitative Synthesis in Systematic Reviews
TL;DR: A stepwise description of the tasks that are performed when statistical methods are used to combine data and the question, Are the results of the different studies similar (homogeneous)?
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Meta-Analysis in Clinical Trials*
TL;DR: This paper examines eight published reviews each reporting results from several related trials in order to evaluate the efficacy of a certain treatment for a specified medical condition and suggests a simple noniterative procedure for characterizing the distribution of treatment effects in a series of studies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stochastic Relaxation, Gibbs Distributions, and the Bayesian Restoration of Images
Stuart Geman,Donald Geman +1 more
TL;DR: The analogy between images and statistical mechanics systems is made and the analogous operation under the posterior distribution yields the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate of the image given the degraded observations, creating a highly parallel ``relaxation'' algorithm for MAP estimation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Statistical Aspects of the Analysis of Data From Retrospective Studies of Disease
Nathan Mantel,William Haenszel +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the role and limitations of retrospective investigations of factors possibly associated with the occurrence of a disease are discussed and their relationship to forward-type studies emphasized, and examples of situations in which misleading associations could arise through the use of inappropriate control groups are presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
Inference from Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences
Andrew Gelman,Donald B. Rubin +1 more
TL;DR: The focus is on applied inference for Bayesian posterior distributions in real problems, which often tend toward normal- ity after transformations and marginalization, and the results are derived as normal-theory approximations to exact Bayesian inference, conditional on the observed simulations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sampling-Based Approaches to Calculating Marginal Densities
TL;DR: In this paper, three sampling-based approaches, namely stochastic substitution, the Gibbs sampler, and the sampling-importance-resampling algorithm, are compared and contrasted in relation to various joint probability structures frequently encountered in applications.
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