Principles of Metaanalysis
Published in: Journal of Rheumatology, v. 27, no. 1, 2000, p. 251-253
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2000
Metaanalysis is a relatively new tool to help make evidence based decisions. This technique involves the systematic examination of available evidence on a given clinical topic, and the summary of that evidence using statistical techniques that pool data from multiple studies to yield a single result. The authors briefly discuss the principal steps in a metaanalysis; identifying all the studies; assessing the studies for quality; organizing the studies into subgroups; and summarizing the results.
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