Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29700839›Full record

ArticleStatistics in medicine2018

Multistep estimators of the between-study variance: The relationship with the Paule-Mandel estimator.

Robbie C M van Aert, Dan Jackson

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In one paragraph

Article in Statistics in medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 11 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
21citing papers in PubMed, 11 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

21 citing papers in PubMed, 11 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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  8. Meta-Analysis for Epigenome-Wide Association Studies.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2022
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Robbie C M van AertMethodology and Statistics, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0001-6187-0665
Dan JacksonStatistical Innovation Group, Advanced Analytics Centre, AstraZeneca, Cambridge, UK.ORCID 0000-0002-4963-8123

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

A wide variety of estimators of the between-study variance are available in random-effects meta-analysis. Many, but not all, of these estimators are based on the method of moments. The DerSimonian-Laird estimator is widely used in applications, but the Paule-Mandel estimator is an alternative that is now recommended. Recently, DerSimonian and Kacker have developed two-step moment-based estimators of the between-study variance. We extend these two-step estimators so that multiple (more than two) steps are used. We establish the surprising result that the multistep estimator tends towards the Paule-Mandel estimator as the number of steps becomes large. Hence, the iterative scheme underlying our new multistep estimator provides a hitherto unknown relationship between two-step estimators and Paule-Mandel estimator. Our analysis suggests that two-step estimators are not necessarily distinct estimators in their own right; instead, they are quantities that are closely related to the usual iterative scheme that is used to calculate the Paule-Mandel estimate. The relationship that we establish between the multistep and Paule-Mandel estimator is another justification for the use of the latter estimator. Two-step and multistep estimators are perhaps best conceptualized as approximate Paule-Mandel estimators.

Indexed as

Meta-Analysis as TopicModels, StatisticalAnalysis of VarianceComputer SimulationHumansestimationiterative schememethod of momentsrandom-effects meta-analysis

Identifiers

PMID29700839
PMCPMC6055723

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.