cumul.rma.mh: Cumulative Meta-Analysis for 'rma.mh' and 'rma.peto' Objects

Description

The functions cumul.rma.mh and cumul.rma.peto repeatedly fit the specified model, adding one observation/study at a time to the model.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'rma.mh':
cumul(x, order, digits=x$digits, transf=FALSE, \dots)
## S3 method for class 'rma.peto':
cumul(x, order, digits=x$digits, transf=FALSE, \dots)

Arguments

an object of class "rma.mh" or "rma.peto".

order

optional vector with indices giving the desired order for the cumulative meta-analysis.

digits

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

transf

logical indicating whether odds ratios or relative risks (and the corresponding confidence interval bounds) should be given in the transformed (meaning: raw) units or in terms of log units (the default).

...

other arguments.

Value

An object of class c("list.rma","cumul.rma"). The object is a list containing the following components:
estimateestimated coefficients of the model.
sestandard errors of the coefficients. NA if transf=TRUE.
zvaltest statistics of the coefficients.
pvalp-values for the test statistics.
ci.lblower bounds of the confidence intervals for the coefficients.
ci.ubupper bounds of the confidence intervals for the coefficients.
QEtest statistics for the tests of heterogeneity.
QEpp-values for the tests of heterogeneity.
The object is formated and printed with print.list.rma. A forest plot showing the results from the cumulative meta-analysis can be obtained with forest.cumul.rma.

References

Chalmers, T. C., & Lau, J. (1993). Meta-analytic stimulus for changes in clinical trials. Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 2, 161--172. Lau, J., Schmid, C. H., & Chalmers, T. C. (1995). Cumulative meta-analysis of clinical trials builds evidence for exemplary medical care. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 48, 45--57. 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/.

Examples

Run this code

### load BCG vaccine data
data(dat.bcg)

### meta-analysis of the (log) relative risks using the Mantel-Haenszel method
res <- rma.mh(ai=tpos, bi=tneg, ci=cpos, di=cneg, data=dat.bcg, measure="RR")

cumul(res, order=order(dat.bcg$year))
cumul(res, order=order(dat.bcg$year), transf=TRUE)

### meta-analysis of the (log) odds ratios using Peto's method
res <- rma.mh(ai=tpos, bi=tneg, ci=cpos, di=cneg, data=dat.bcg)

### cumulative meta-analysis
cumul(res, order=order(dat.bcg$year))
cumul(res, order=order(dat.bcg$year), transf=TRUE)