print.rma.uni {metafor}R Documentation

Print and Summary Methods for 'rma' Objects

Description

Print and summary methods for objects of class "rma.uni", "rma.mh", "rma.peto", "rma.glmm", and "rma.glmm".

Usage

## S3 method for class 'rma.uni'
print(x, digits, showfit=FALSE, signif.stars=getOption("show.signif.stars"),
      signif.legend=signif.stars, ...)

## S3 method for class 'rma.mh'
print(x, digits, showfit=FALSE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'rma.peto'
print(x, digits, showfit=FALSE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'rma.glmm'
print(x, digits, showfit=FALSE, signif.stars=getOption("show.signif.stars"),
      signif.legend=signif.stars, ...)

## S3 method for class 'rma.mv'
print(x, digits, showfit=FALSE, signif.stars=getOption("show.signif.stars"),
      signif.legend=signif.stars, ...)

## S3 method for class 'rma'
summary(object, digits, showfit=TRUE, ...)

## S3 method for class 'summary.rma'
print(x, digits, showfit=TRUE, signif.stars=getOption("show.signif.stars"),
      signif.legend=signif.stars, ...)

Arguments

x

an object of class "rma.uni", "rma.mh", "rma.peto", "rma.glmm", "rma.mv", or "summary.rma" (for print).

object

an object of class "rma" (for summary).

digits

integer specifying the number of decimal places to which the printed results should be rounded (if unspecified, the default is to take the value from the object).

showfit

logical indicating whether the fit statistics and information criteria should be printed (the default is FALSE for print and TRUE for summary).

signif.stars

logical indicating whether p-values should be encoded visually with ‘significance stars’. Defaults to the show.signif.stars slot of options.

signif.legend

logical indicating whether the legend for the ‘significance stars’ should be printed. Defaults to the value for signif.stars.

...

other arguments.

Details

The output includes:

Value

The print functions do not return an object. The summary function returns the object passed to it (with additional class "summary.rma").

Note

For random-effects models, the statistic is computed with

I² = 100% hat(τ)² / (hat(τ)² + s²),

where hat(τ)² is the estimated value of τ² and

s² = ((k-1) ∑ wᵢ) / ((∑ wᵢ)² - ∑ wᵢ²),

where wᵢ is the inverse of the sampling variance of the ith study ( is equation 9 in Higgins & Thompson, 2002, and can be regarded as the ‘typical’ within-study variance of the observed effect sizes or outcomes). The statistic is computed with

H² = (hat(τ)² + s²) / s².

Analogous equations are used for mixed-effects models.

Therefore, depending on the estimator of τ² used, the values of and will change. For random-effects models, and are typically computed in practice with I² = (Q-(k-1))/Q and H² = Q/(k-1), where Q denotes the statistic for the test of heterogeneity and k the number of studies (i.e., observed effects or outcomes) included in the meta-analysis. The equations used in the metafor package to compute these statistics are more general and have the advantage that the values of and will be consistent with the estimated value of τ² (i.e., if hat(τ)² = 0, then I² = 0 and H² = 1 and if hat(τ)² > 0, then I² > 0 and H² > 1).

The two definitions of and actually coincide when using the DerSimonian-Laird estimator of τ² (i.e., the commonly used equations are actually special cases of the more general definitions given above). Therefore, if you prefer the more conventional definitions of these statistics, use method="DL" when fitting the random/mixed-effects model with the rma.uni function.

The pseudo statistic (Raudenbush, 2009) is computed with

R² = (hat(τ)²_RE - hat(τ)²_ME) / hat(τ)²_RE,

where hat(τ)²_RE denotes the estimated value of τ² based on the random-effects model (i.e., the total amount of heterogeneity) and hat(τ)²_ME denotes the estimated value of τ² based on the mixed-effects model (i.e., the residual amount of heterogeneity). It can happen that hat(τ)²_RE < hat(τ)²_ME, in which case is set to zero. Again, the value of will change depending on the estimator of τ² used. Also note that this statistic is only computed when the mixed-effects model includes an intercept (so that the random-effects model is clearly nested within the mixed-effects model). You can also use the anova.rma function to compute for any two models that are known to be nested. Note that the pseudo statistic may not be very accurate unless k is large (Lopez-Lopez et al., 2014).

Author(s)

Wolfgang Viechtbauer wvb@metafor-project.org
package website: http://www.metafor-project.org/
author homepage: http://www.wvbauer.com/

References

Higgins, J. P. T., & Thompson, S. G. (2002). Quantifying heterogeneity in a meta-analysis. Statistics in Medicine, 21, 1539–1558.

Lopez-Lopez, J. A., Marin-Martinez, F., Sanchez-Meca, J., Van den Noortgate, W., & Viechtbauer, W. (2014). Estimation of the predictive power of the model in mixed-effects meta-regression: A simulation study. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 67, 30–48.

Raudenbush, S. W. (2009). Analyzing effect sizes: Random effects models. In H. Cooper, L. V. Hedges, & J. C. Valentine (Eds.), The handbook of research synthesis and meta-analysis (2nd ed., pp. 295–315). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1–48. http://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/.

See Also

rma.uni, rma.mh, rma.peto, rma.glmm, rma.mv


[Package metafor version 2.0-0 Index]