EXPLORATORY OR ANALYTIC METAANALYSIS - SHOULD WE DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THEM
EXPLORATORY OR ANALYTIC METAANALYSIS - SHOULD WE DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THEM
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DOI：
10.1016/0895-4356(94)00084-4
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发表时间：
1995-01-01
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
FLEISS, JL
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
ANELLO, C;FLEISS, JL
元分析被定义为一项研究和“结合或整合几个独立研究结果的统计分析”。这个定义中还包括其他术语，如系统概述、汇总数据、汇总研究结果和定量文献综述。像任何研究一样，所提出的问题将影响元分析的设计和分析方法。由于荟萃分析是一项基于文献综述的研究，因此它本质上是观察性的，而不是实验性的。这一观点得到了这样一个事实的支持，即元分析师对研究的可用性或在单个研究中收集和报告的信息的控制有限。荟萃分析已应用于临床试验和流行病学。乍一看，流行病学中出现偏倚的可能性似乎比临床试验更大。但这可能取决于所问的问题。如果随机临床试验仅限于改善对效果的估计或在一组相对均匀的效应量中检验一个假设，那么临床试验往往比一组可比的流行病学研究更不容易产生偏倚。在这种情况下，可组合性问题可能主导meta分析。我们将这种类型的元分析称为“分析”元分析。另一方面，当目标是解决争议，或提出和回答新问题时，元分析的主要关注点是解释效应大小的变化。我们将这种元分析的应用称为“探索性”元分析。在第二种类型的元分析中，不同研究的特点成为分析的重点。这就产生了一种想法，即荟萃分析的方案应该反映其目标以及如何使用结果。最后，我们将考虑meta分析是否在药物开发领域发挥作用。
Meta-analysis has been defined as a study and ''statistical analysis which combines or integrates the results of several independent studies.'' Included in this definition are other terms, such as systematic overviews, pooling data, pooling study results, and quantitative literature reviews. Like any study, the questions being asked will influence the design and the method of analysis of the meta-analysis. Since a meta-analysis is a study based on a literature review, it is inherently observational rather than experimental in nature. This idea is supported by the fact that the meta-analyst has limited control over the availability of studies or the information collected and reported in the individual studies. Meta-analysis has been applied to clinical trials and epidemiology. At first glance the potential for bias appears greater in epidemiology than in clinical trials. But this may depend on the question being asked. If randomized clinical trials are limited to improving an estimate of effect or testing a hypothesis in a relatively homogeneous set of effect sizes, the clinical trial will tend to be less prone to bias than a comparable set of epidemiologic studies. In this context, the issue of combinability may dominate the meta-analysis. We refer to this type of meta-analysis as an ''analytic'' meta-analysis. On the other hand when the goal is to resolve controversy, or pose and answer new questions the main concern of the meta-analysis is to explain the variation in the effect sizes. We refer to this application of a meta-analysis as an ''exploratory'' meta-analysis. In this second type of meta-analysis the characteristics of the different studies become the focus of the analysis. This leads to the idea that protocols for a meta-analysis should reflect its goals and how the results are to be used. Finally, we will consider whether there is a role of meta-analysis in the field of drug development.