COMPARISON OF METAANALYSIS VERSUS ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF INDIVIDUAL PATIENT DATA

Authors
Citation
I. Olkin et A. Sampson, COMPARISON OF METAANALYSIS VERSUS ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF INDIVIDUAL PATIENT DATA, Biometrics, 54(1), 1998, pp. 317-322
Citations number
11
Categorie Soggetti
Statistic & Probability","Biology Miscellaneous","Statistic & Probability",Mathematics
Journal title
ISSN journal
0006341X
Volume
54
Issue
1
Year of publication
1998
Pages
317 - 322
Database
ISI
SICI code
0006-341X(1998)54:1<317:COMVAO>2.0.ZU;2-U
Abstract
Meta-analysis is a method of synthesizing the results of independent s tudies. We consider the case in which there are multiple treatments an d a control, with the goal of estimating the relative effect of each t reatment based on continuous outcomes. Even when all data are availabl e, rather than only summary data, it has become common to use meta-ana lytic estimators of treatment contrasts. Alternatively, we could use a two-way analysis of variance model with no interaction in which one f actor is study and one factor is treatment. For the unbalanced case, w e obtain the surprising result that the standard meta-analysis estimat es of treatment contrasts are identical to the least squares estimator s of treatment contrasts in the linear model. Because a meta-analysis of individual patient data can be considerably more costly in terms of data retrieval than a meta-analysis of summary data, this equivalence provides for cost-efficient analysis.