Journal
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS METHODS
Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 2-19Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/jrsm.4
Keywords
meta-analysis; evidence synthesis; individual participant data (IPD); binary data; participant-level covariate
Funding
- U.S. National Institutes of Health (Clinical Trial Design and Analysis in TBI Project) [R01 NS-042691]
- MRC [G0800808] Funding Source: UKRI
- Medical Research Council [G0800808] Funding Source: researchfish
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In this paper, we develop meta-analysis models that synthesize a binary outcome from health-care studies while accounting for participant-level covariates. In particular, we show how to synthesize the observed event-risk across studies while accounting for the within-study association between participant-level covariates and individual event probability. The models are adapted for situations where studies provide individual participant data (IPD), or a mixture of IPD and aggregate data. We show that the availability of IPD is crucial in at least some studies; this allows one to model potentially complex within-study associations and separate them from across-study associations, so as to account for potential ecological bias and study-level confounding. The models can produce pertinent population-level and individual-level results, such as the pooled event-risk and the covariate-specific event probability for an individual. Application is made to 14 studies of traumatic brain injury, where IPD are available for four studies and the six-month mortality risk is synthesized in relation to individual age. The results show that as individual age increases the probability of six-month mortality also increases; further, the models reveal clear evidence of ecological bias, with the mean age in each study additionally influencing an individual's mortality probability. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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