StATS: Meta-analysis and diagnostic tests (February 14, 2006)

I will be giving a talk at the graduate seminar series for the department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMKC on February 23. It will be a combination of material from the following web pages:

• Statistical Evidence. Chapter 5. Meta-analysis
• Stats: Guidelines for meta-analysis models
• Definition: Sensitivity
• Definition: Specificity
• Stats: Meta-analysis for a diagnostic test

The title of the talk will be "Meta-analysis and diagnostic tests." and here is my abstract:

Meta-analysis is the quantitative combination of results from multiple research studies. Meta-analysis is a relatively new field in Statistics, and standards for the proper data analysis are still evolving. Meta-analysis of studies of diagnostic tests, in particular, is especially controversial, with many conflicting approaches for computing an overall estimate from the individual sensitivity or specificity values from these studies. In the first half of this talk, I will review the general methods for the quantitative combination of results in a meta-analysis, and work out two examples using R and the meta library. In the second half, I will use data from a meta-analysis of 20 studies of endovaginal ultrasonography for detecting endometrial cancer to illustrate and critically evaluate several competing approaches for quantitatively combining results from diagnostic studies. All the data sets used in this presentation come from journal articles where the full free text is available on the web. A handout for this seminar can be found at www.childrens-mercy.org/stats/training/hand67.asp.

This page was written by Steve Simon while working at Children's Mercy Hospital. Although I do not hold the copyright for this material, I am reproducing it here as a service, as it is no longer available on the Children's Mercy Hospital website. Need more information? I have a page with general help resources. You can also browse for pages similar to this one at Category: Systematic overviews.