*! version 4.08 David Fisher 17jun2024
help metan_continuous

Title

metan -- Perform meta-analysis of two-group continuous data

Syntax

metan n_treat mean_treat sd_treat n_ctrl mean_ctrl sd_ctrl [if] [in]
[, model_spec options_continuous options_main]

options_continuous

Options
cohend pool Cohen's d standardised mean differences (default)

hedgesg pool Hedges's g standardised mean differences

glassd pool Glass's delta mean differences, standardised by the control group

md, wmd, nostandard pool unstandardised ("weighted") mean differences

effect(string) user-defined title for "effect size" column in the output

Forest plot and/or saved data
counts display data counts (N, mean, SD) for treatment and control group

group1(string), group2(string) specify title text for the two columns created by counts

npts display participant numbers in the forest plot

Description

metan performs meta-analysis of aggregate data; that is, data in which each observation represents a summary of a larger study.
This page describes options specific to a meta-analysis of studies comparing a continuous outcome between two treatment groups.
If no options are supplied, the default analysis is a common-effect inverse-variance analysis of Cohen's d standardised mean differences.

Click here to return to the main metan help page
and to find documentation for model_spec and options_main.

Options

cohend, hedgesg, glassd pool standardised mean differences by the methods of Cohen (default),
Hedges and Glass respectively (Deeks, Altman and Bradburn 2001).

md, wmd, nostandard are synonyms, and pool unstandardised ("weighted") mean differences.

effect(string) overrides the default title for the "effect size" column in the output generated by the options above.

Forest plot and/or saved data

counts displays the sample size, mean and SD for each group in columns to the left of the forest plot.

group1(string), group2(string) are for use with the counts option, and contain names for the two groups.
If these are not supplied, the default names "Treatment" and "Control" are used.

npts displays participant numbers in a column to the left of the graph.

Authors

Original authors:
Michael J Bradburn, Jonathan J Deeks, Douglas G Altman.
Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

metan v3.04 for Stata v9:
Ross J Harris, Roger M Harbord, Jonathan A C Sterne.
Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

metan v4.00 and later (including current version):
David Fisher, MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, London, UK.

Email d.fisher@ucl.ac.uk

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Patrick Royston (MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, London, UK) for suggestions of improvements to the code and help file.

Thanks to Vince Wiggins, Kit Baum and Jeff Pitblado of Statacorp who offered advice and helped facilitate the version 9 update.

Thanks to Julian Higgins and Jonathan A C Sterne (University of Bristol, Bristol, UK) who offered advice and helped facilitate this latest update,
and thanks to Daniel Klein (Universität Kassel, Germany) for assistance with testing under older Stata versions.

The "click to run" element of the examples in this document is handled using an idea originally developed by Robert Picard.