Network meta-analysis has been an essential methodology of systematic reviews for comparative effectiveness research. The restricted maximum likelihood (REML) method is one of the current standard inference methods for multivariate, contrast-based meta-analysis models, but recent studies have revealed the resultant confidence intervals of average…

Descriptive analyses of socially important or theoretically interesting phenomena and trends are a vital component of research in the behavioral, social, economic, and health sciences. Such analyses yield reliable results when using representative individual participant data (IPD) from studies with complex survey designs, including educational…

Meta-analyses are often used to synthesize the findings of studies examining the correlational relationship between two continuous variables. When only dichotomous measurements are available for one of the two variables, the biserial correlation coefficient can be used to estimate the product-moment correlation between the two underlying…

A network meta-analysis allows a simultaneous comparison between treatments evaluated in randomised controlled trials that share at least one treatment with at least one other study. Estimates of treatment effects may be required for treatments across disconnected networks of evidence, which requires a different statistical approach and modelling…

Launching biomedical innovations based on clinical demands instead of translating basic research findings to practice reduces the risk that the results will not fit the clinical routine. To realize this type of innovation, a meta-analysis of the body of research is necessary to reveal demand-matching concepts. However, both the data deluge and the…