- #COMPREHENSIVE META ANALYSIS LICENSE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA HOW TO#
- #COMPREHENSIVE META ANALYSIS LICENSE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SOFTWARE#
Firstly, the pre-registration process compels the researcher to formulate a study rationale for a specific research question, which is the foundation of a good systematic review ( Counsell, 1997). The chief benefits of pre-registering a meta-analysis protocol are twofold. Meta-analysis Protocol and Pre-registration
For a more in-depth and technical treatment of step-by-step meta-analysis methods, a range of excellent resources are available ( Lipsey and Wilson, 2001 Hunter and Schmidt, 2004 Cooper, 2009). Ultimately, the intention of this article is to improve understanding of meta-analytical procedures, and also better prepare the reader to evaluate published meta-analyses. Thus, a supplementary step-by-step script illustrating the analytic procedures described in this paper, which requires only a rudimentary understanding of R, has been provided. Performing a meta-analysis with R can appear daunting to those accustomed to “point and click” statistical environments such as SPSS and SAS. Example analyses will be demonstrated using packages within the freely available R statistical environment ( R Development Core Team, 2015).
#COMPREHENSIVE META ANALYSIS LICENSE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA HOW TO#
Therefore, this review will demonstrate how to conduct a meta-analysis following PRISMA guidelines. Over half of the 25 journals that publish the most meta-analyses in psychology (Figure 2) recommend the use of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (PRISMA Moher et al., 2009), or the related Meta-Analysis Reporting Standards (MARS APA, 2008). The goal of this article is to provide a brief non-technical primer to guide the reader through this process, from pre-registration to the publication of results. However, it appears these approaches have yet to be combined in a single resource targeting psychological scientists.
Prior treatments have outlined the protocol ( Shamseer et al., 2015) and pre-registration ( Stewart et al., 2012) process, the theory behind conducting meta-analysis with vignettes ( Viechtbauer, 2010), and guidelines for reporting meta-analysis ( Moher et al., 2009).
#COMPREHENSIVE META ANALYSIS LICENSE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SOFTWARE#
This trend is likely to continue given exponential increases in published research ( Bornmann and Mutz, 2015) and the wider availability of software and scripts for computing meta-analyses.
There is growing interest in using meta-analysis within the psychological sciences (Figure 1). Moreover, meta-analytic outcomes are often used to summarize a research area in an effort to better direct future work. Meta-analyses are commonly used to support research grant applications, treatment guidelines, and health policy. By extracting effect sizes and measures of variance, numerous outcomes can be combined to compute a summary effect size. An improved understanding this tool will not only help scientists to conduct their own meta-analyses but also improve their evaluation of published meta-analyses.Ī meta-analysis is a statistical integration of evidence from multiple studies that address a common research question. I also emphasize the importance of meta-analysis protocols and pre-registration to improve transparency and help avoid unintended duplication. While the worked example is the analysis of a correlational dataset, the general meta-analytic process described in this paper is applicable for all types of effect sizes. I provide a supplementary R script to demonstrate each analytical step described in the paper, which is readily adaptable for researchers to use for their analyses. The aim of this article is to provide a practical and non-technical guide for psychological scientists that outlines the steps involved in planning and performing a meta-analysis of correlational datasets. Moreover, they are often used to support research grant applications, guide clinical practice, and direct health policy. Outcomes from meta-analyses provide a more objective and transparent summary of a research area than traditional narrative reviews. Meta-analysis synthesizes a body of research investigating a common research question. NORMENT, KG Jebsen Centre for Psychosis Research, Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.