Addressing the estimation of standard errors in fixed effects meta‐analysis

Standard methods for fixed effects meta‐analysis assume that standard errors for study‐specific estimates are known, not estimated. While the impact of this simplifying assumption has been shown in a few special cases, its general impact is not well understood, nor are general‐purpose tools availabl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Statistics in medicine Vol. 37; no. 11; pp. 1788 - 1809
Main Authors: Domínguez Islas, Clara, Rice, Kenneth M.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 20.05.2018
John Wiley and Sons Inc
Subjects:
Biostatistics - methods
Common Cold - drug therapy
Computer Simulation
Errors
fixed effects
heterogeneity
Humans
Meta-analysis
Meta-Analysis as Topic
Methods
Models, Statistical
random effects
Systematic Reviews as Topic
Zinc - therapeutic use
random effects
meta-analysis
fixed effects
heterogeneity
ISSN:0277-6715, 1097-0258, 1097-0258
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Standard methods for fixed effects meta‐analysis assume that standard errors for study‐specific estimates are known, not estimated. While the impact of this simplifying assumption has been shown in a few special cases, its general impact is not well understood, nor are general‐purpose tools available for inference under more realistic assumptions. In this paper, we aim to elucidate the impact of using estimated standard errors in fixed effects meta‐analysis, showing why it does not go away in large samples and quantifying how badly miscalibrated standard inference will be if it is ignored. We also show the important role of a particular measure of heterogeneity in this miscalibration. These developments lead to confidence intervals for fixed effects meta‐analysis with improved performance for both location and scale parameters.
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The legal statement for this article was changed on 5 June 2018 after original online publication.
ISSN:0277-6715
1097-0258
1097-0258
DOI:10.1002/sim.7625