A robust and readily implementable method for the meta-analysis of response ratios with and without missing standard deviations

Nakagawa, S., Noble, D. W. A., Lagisz, M., Spake, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4671-2225, Viechtbauer, W. and Senior, A. M. (2023) A robust and readily implementable method for the meta-analysis of response ratios with and without missing standard deviations. Ecology Letters, 26 (2). pp. 232-244. ISSN 1461-0248 doi: 10.1111/ele.14144

Abstract/Summary

The log response ratio, lnRR, is the most frequently used effect size statistic for meta-analysis in ecology. However, often missing standard deviations (SDs) prevent estimation of the sampling variance of lnRR. We propose new methods to deal with missing SDs via a weighted average coefficient of variation (CV) estimated from studies in the dataset that do report SDs. Across a suite of simulated conditions, we find that using the average CV to estimate sampling variances for all observations, regardless of missingness, performs with minimal bias. Surprisingly, even with missing SDs, this simple method outperforms the conventional approach (basing each effect size on its individual study-specific CV) with complete data. This is because the conventional method ultimately yields less precise estimates of the sampling variances than using the pooled CV from multiple studies. Our approach is broadly applicable and can be implemented in all meta-analyses of lnRR, regardless of ‘missingness’.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/109391
Identification Number/DOI	10.1111/ele.14144
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Publisher	Wiley
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