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ERIC Number: EJ1288361
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Mar
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1759-2879
EISSN: N/A
Estimating the Reference Range from a Meta-Analysis
Siegel, Lianne; Murad, M. Hassan; Chu, Haitao
Research Synthesis Methods, v12 n2 p148-160 Mar 2021
Often clinicians are interested in determining whether a subject's measurement falls within a normal range, defined as a range of values of a continuous outcome which contains some proportion (eg, 95%) of measurements from a healthy population. Several studies in the biomedical field have estimated reference ranges based on a meta-analysis of multiple studies with healthy individuals. However, the literature currently gives no guidance about how to estimate the reference range of a new subject in such settings. Instead, meta-analyses of such normative range studies typically report the pooled mean as a reference value, which does not incorporate natural variation across healthy individuals in different studies. We present three approaches to calculating the normal reference range of a subject from a meta-analysis of normally or lognormally distributed outcomes: a frequentist random effects model, a Bayesian random effects model, and an empirical approach. We present the results of a simulation study demonstrating that the methods perform well under a variety of scenarios, though users should be cautious when the number of studies is small and between-study heterogeneity is large. Finally, we apply these methods to two examples: pediatric time spent awake after sleep onset and frontal subjective postural vertical measurements.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (DHHS/NIH); National Library of Medicine (DHHS/NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: T32HL129956; R01LM012982; R21LM012744