TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessment of key characteristics, methodology, and effect size measures used in meta-analysis of human-health-related animal studies
AU - Hooijmans, Carlijn R.
AU - Donders, Rogier
AU - Magnuson, Kristen
AU - Wever, Kimberley E.
AU - Ergün, Mehmet
AU - Rooney, Andrew A.
AU - Walker, Vickie
AU - Langendam, Miranda W.
N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under contract GS00Q14OADU417; HHSN273201600015U. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Research Synthesis Methods published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Since the early 1990s the number of systematic reviews (SR) of animal studies has steadily increased. There is, however, little guidance on when and how to conduct a meta-analysis of human-health-related animal studies. To gain insight about the methods that are currently used we created an overview of the key characteristics of published meta-analyses of animal studies, with a focus on the choice of effect size measures. An additional goal was to learn about the rationale behind the meta-analysis methods used by the review authors. We show that important details of the meta-analyses are not fully described, only a fraction of all human-health-related meta-analyses provided rationales for their decision to use specific effect size measures. In addition, our data may suggest that authors make post-hoc decisions to switch to another effect size measure during the course of their meta-analysis, and possibly search for significant effects. Based on analyses in this paper we recommend that review teams: 1) publish a review protocol before starting the conduct of a SR, prespecifying all methodological details (providing special attention to the planned meta-analysis including the effect size measure and the rational behind choosing a specific effect size, prespecifying subgroups and restricting the number of subgroup analyses), 2) always use the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist to report your SR of animal studies, and 3) use the random effects model (REM) in human-health-related meta-analysis of animal studies, unless the assumptions for using the fixed effect model (FEM) are all met.
AB - Since the early 1990s the number of systematic reviews (SR) of animal studies has steadily increased. There is, however, little guidance on when and how to conduct a meta-analysis of human-health-related animal studies. To gain insight about the methods that are currently used we created an overview of the key characteristics of published meta-analyses of animal studies, with a focus on the choice of effect size measures. An additional goal was to learn about the rationale behind the meta-analysis methods used by the review authors. We show that important details of the meta-analyses are not fully described, only a fraction of all human-health-related meta-analyses provided rationales for their decision to use specific effect size measures. In addition, our data may suggest that authors make post-hoc decisions to switch to another effect size measure during the course of their meta-analysis, and possibly search for significant effects. Based on analyses in this paper we recommend that review teams: 1) publish a review protocol before starting the conduct of a SR, prespecifying all methodological details (providing special attention to the planned meta-analysis including the effect size measure and the rational behind choosing a specific effect size, prespecifying subgroups and restricting the number of subgroup analyses), 2) always use the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist to report your SR of animal studies, and 3) use the random effects model (REM) in human-health-related meta-analysis of animal studies, unless the assumptions for using the fixed effect model (FEM) are all met.
KW - effect size measures
KW - meta-analysis
KW - meta-research
KW - systematic review of animal studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133622527&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1578
DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1578
M3 - Article
C2 - 35679294
SN - 1759-2887
VL - 13
SP - 790
EP - 806
JO - Research synthesis methods
JF - Research synthesis methods
IS - 6
ER -