The partial correlation coefficient (PCC) is used to quantify the linear relationship between two variables while taking into account/controlling for other variables. Researchers frequently synthesize PCCs in a meta-analysis, but two of the assumptions of the common equal-effect and random-effects meta-analysis model are by definition violated.…

This study builds on the simulation framework of a recent paper by Stanley and Doucouliagos ("Research Synthesis Methods" 2023;14;515--519). S&D use simulations to make the argument that meta-analyses using partial correlation coefficients (PCCs) should employ a "suboptimal" estimator of the PCC standard error when…

In random-effects meta-analysis the between-study variance ([tau][superscript 2]) has a key role in assessing heterogeneity of study-level estimates and combining them to estimate an overall effect. For odds ratios the most common methods suffer from bias in estimating [tau][superscript 2] and the overall effect and produce confidence intervals…

It is common to include multiple dependent variables (DVs) in single-case experimental design (SCED) meta-analyses. However, statistical issues associated with multiple DVs in the multilevel modeling approach (i.e., possible dependency of error, heterogeneous treatment effects, and heterogeneous error structures) have not been fully investigated.…

In meta-analytic studies, there are often multiple moderators available (eg, study characteristics). In such cases, traditional meta-analysis methods often lack sufficient power to investigate interaction effects between moderators, especially high-order interactions. To overcome this problem, meta-CART was proposed: an approach that applies…

Synthesizing findings about the indirect (mediated) effect plays an important role in determining the mechanism through which variables affect one another. This simulation study compared six methods for synthesizing indirect effects: correlation-based MASEM, parameter-based MASEM, marginal likelihood synthesis, an adjustment to marginal likelihood…

Diagnostic test accuracy studies frequently report on sensitivities and specificities for more than one threshold of the diagnostic test under study. Although it is obvious that the information from all thresholds should be used for a meta-analysis, in practice, frequently, only a single pair of sensitivity and specificity is selected. To overcome…

This study aimed to determine for continuous outcomes dependent on baseline risk, whether funnel plot asymmetry may be due to statistical artefact rather than publication bias and evaluate a novel test to resolve this. Firstly, we conducted assessment for publication bias in nine meta-analyses of postoperative analgesics (344 trials with 25 348…

Response control or inhibition is one of the cornerstones of modern cognitive psychology, featuring prominently in theories of executive functioning and impulsive behavior. However, repeated failures to observe correlations between commonly applied tasks have led some theorists to question whether common response conflict processes even exist. A…

Time-course model-based network meta-analysis (MBNMA) has been proposed as a framework to combine treatment comparisons from a network of randomized controlled trials reporting outcomes at multiple time-points. This can explain heterogeneity/inconsistency that arises by pooling studies with different follow-up times and allow inclusion of studies…

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…

Bayesian statistical approaches to mixed treatment comparisons (MTCs) are becoming more popular because of their flexibility and interpretability. Many randomized clinical trials report multiple outcomes with possible inherent correlations. Moreover, MTC data are typically sparse (although richer than standard meta-analysis, comparing only two…

Existing methods for meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy focus primarily on a single index test. We propose models for the joint meta-analysis of studies comparing multiple index tests on the same participants in paired designs. These models respect the grouping of data by studies, account for the within-study correlation between the tests'…

According to the retrieved context theory of episodic memory, the cue for recall of an item is a weighted sum of recently activated cognitive states, including previously recalled and studied items as well as their associations. We show that this theory predicts there should be compound cuing in free recall. Specifically, the temporal contiguity…

Monte Carlo studies of several fixed-effects methods for combining and comparing correlation matrices have shown that two refinements improve estimation and inference substantially. With rare exception, however, these simulations have involved homogeneous data analyzed using conditional meta-analytic procedures. The present study builds on…