Background/Context: Over the past twenty plus years, the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) has reviewed over 1,700 studies, cataloging effect sizes for 189 interventions. Some 56% of these interventions include results from multiple, independent studies; on average, these include results of [approximately]3 studies, though some include as many as 32…

Methods of network meta-analysis (NMA) can be classified as arm-based and contrast-based approaches. There are several arm-based approaches, and some of these have been criticized because they recover inter-study information and hence do not obey the principle of concurrent control. Here, we point out that recovery of inter-study information in…

Publication bias is a ubiquitous threat to the validity of meta-analysis and the accumulation of scientific evidence. In order to estimate and counteract the impact of publication bias, multiple methods have been developed; however, recent simulation studies have shown the methods' performance to depend on the true data generating process, and no…

In sparse data meta-analyses (with few trials or zero events), conventional methods may distort results. Although better-performing one-stage methods have become available in recent years, their implementation remains limited in practice. This study examines the impact of using conventional methods compared to one-stage models by re-analysing…

Meta-analyses examining dichotomous outcomes often include single-zero studies, where no events occur in intervention or control groups. These pose challenges, and several methods have been proposed to address them. A fixed continuity correction method has been shown to bias estimates, but it is frequently used because sometimes software (e.g.,…

In meta-analyses of rare events, it can be challenging to obtain a reliable estimate of the pooled effect, in particular when the meta-analysis is based on a small number of studies. Recent simulation studies have shown that the beta-binomial model is a promising candidate in this situation, but have thus far only investigated its performance in a…

The distribution of the standardized mean difference is well understood. However, in many situations, researchers need to estimate an effect size to represent the relationship between a continuous outcome and a dichotomous grouping variable, adjusting for the effect of a covariate (or a set of covariates). Typically, this adjustment takes place…

The number of clinical prediction models sharing the same prediction task has increased in the medical literature. However, evidence synthesis methodologies that use the results of these prediction models have not been sufficiently studied, particularly in the context of meta-analysis settings where only summary statistics are available. In…

Drug repurposing refers to the process of discovering new therapeutic uses for existing medicines. Compared to traditional drug discovery, drug repurposing is attractive for its speed, cost, and reduced risk of failure. However, existing approaches for drug repurposing involve complex, computationally-intensive analytical methods that are not…

Meta-analytic models for dependent effect sizes have grown increasingly sophisticated over the last few decades, which has created challenges for a priori power calculations. We introduce power approximations for tests of average effect sizes based upon several common approaches for handling dependent effect sizes. In a Monte Carlo simulation, we…

This study used a meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach to build extended versions of the simple view of reading (SVR) model in second and foreign language (SFL) learning contexts (i.e., SVR-SFL). Based on the correlation coefficients derived from primary studies, we replicated and integrated two previous extended meta-analytic SVR…

Standard methods for the meta-analysis of medical tests, without assuming a gold standard, are limited to dichotomous data. Multivariate probit models are used to analyse correlated dichotomous data, and can be extended to model ordinal data. Within the context of an imperfect gold standard, they have previously been used for the analysis of…

Prospective registration of study protocols in clinical trial registries is a useful way to minimize the risk of publication bias in meta-analysis, and several clinical trial registries are available nowadays. However, they are mainly used as a tool for searching studies and information submitted to the registries has not been utilized as…

In this study, we report on a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) for the application of technology acceptance models to Moodle under the prism of latent variable modeling. Based on an automatic search including primary studies from journals, conferences, and book chapters during 2001 to 2019, 41 primary were selected. We aim to contribute to a better…

For meta-analysis of studies that report outcomes as binomial proportions, the most popular measure of effect is the odds ratio (OR), usually analyzed as log(OR). Many meta-analyses use the risk ratio (RR) and its logarithm because of its simpler interpretation. Although log(OR) and log(RR) are both unbounded, use of log(RR) must ensure that…