Meta-analysis of non-statistically significant unreported effects

A Albajes-Eizagirre, A Solanes… - Statistical methods in …, 2019 - journals.sagepub.com
Statistical methods in medical research, 2019journals.sagepub.com
Published studies in Medicine (and virtually any other discipline) sometimes report that a
difference or correlation did not reach statistical significance but do not report its effect size
or any statistic from which the latter may be derived. Unfortunately, meta-analysts should not
exclude these studies because their exclusion would bias the meta-analytic outcome, but
also they cannot be included as null effect sizes because this strategy is also associated to
bias. To overcome this problem, we have developed MetaNSUE, a novel method based on …
Published studies in Medicine (and virtually any other discipline) sometimes report that a difference or correlation did not reach statistical significance but do not report its effect size or any statistic from which the latter may be derived. Unfortunately, meta-analysts should not exclude these studies because their exclusion would bias the meta-analytic outcome, but also they cannot be included as null effect sizes because this strategy is also associated to bias. To overcome this problem, we have developed MetaNSUE, a novel method based on multiple imputations of the censored information. We also provide an R package and an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface for non-R meta-analysts.
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