[R] metafor - Meta-Analysis of rare events / beta-binomial regression

[Markus Kösters]

Dear Michael,

Thank you very much for your input, that is very much appreciated. I have not considered that method, because it's rather outlawed in general. But it is also included in Kuss and if I understood correctly, the collapsing method (and the Cochrane method) both performed not too bad under FEM assumption and had weaknesses in REM. I usually prefer a REM approach, but in this case that may not be that important.
I will also read the mmeta paper and documentation.

Thanks a lot!

Markus


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Michael Dewey [mailto:lists at dewey.myzen.co.uk] 
Gesendet: Freitag, 27. November 2015 13:32
An: Markus Kösters; r-help at r-project.org
Betreff: Re: [R] metafor - Meta-Analysis of rare events / beta-binomial regression

Dear Markus

This is not a direct answer to your question, I will leave that to Wolfgang but two thoughts:

1 - if all the studies have very sparse data @article{bradburn07,
    author = {Bradburn, M J and Deeks, J J and Berlin, J A and Localio, A R},
    title = {Much ado about nothing: a comparison of the performance of
       meta--analytical methods with rare events},
    journal = {Statistics in Medicine},
    year = {2007},
    volume = {26},
    pages = {53--77},
    keywords = {meta-analysis, fixed effects, random effects} } suggests, surprisingly, that just collapsing the tables may be adequate

2 - there is a CRAN package mmeta which uses beta-binomial in a Bayesian perspective. I did not find the documentation very explicit but there is a paper in JSS.

On 26/11/2015 13:39, Markus Kösters wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I am currently writing a protocol for a meta-analysis which will 
> analyze suicidal events. Recently, O. Kuss has (DOI 10.1002/sim.6383) 
> published a paper that suggest using beta-binomial regression methods 
> to incorporate double-zero studies. He states that  Methods that 
> ignore information from double-zero studies or use continuity 
> corrections should no longer be used.  It seems obvious to me that 
> excluding studies with zero events will bias the results and I am 
> willing to follow his advice. However, I am not a a biometrician, I 
> have to admit that I am at a loss if and how it is possible to fit 
> such model within the metafor package. Can someone help me or should I 
> use the Yusuf Peto odds ratio method as suggested in the Cochrane handbook?
>
> Many thanks in advance,
>
>
>
> Markus
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
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--
Michael
http://www.dewey.myzen.co.uk/home.html