confint.hetmeta: Confidence Intervals for 'hetmeta' Objects

Description

The function calculates confidence intervals for the heterogeneity measures in a 'hetmeta' object.

Usage

"confint"(object, parm, level, digits, ...)

Arguments

object

an object of class hetmeta produced by hetmeta.

parm

this argument is here for compatability with the generic function confint, but is (currently) ignored.

level

numerical value between 0 and 100 specifying the confidence interval level (if unspecified, the default is to take the value from the object).

digits

an integer specifying the number of digits to which printed results must be rounded.

...

further arguments passed to or from other methods.

Details

The confidence intervals are constructed based on the (asymptotic) normal distribution of the estimators. Standard error are derived using the delta method. See the references for more details.

References

Takkouche B, Khudyakov P, Costa-Bouzas J, Spiegelman D. Confidence Intervals for Heterogeneity Measures in Meta-analysis. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2013:kwt060.

Crippa A, Khudyakov P, Wang M, Orsini N, Spiegelman D. A new measure of between-studies heterogeneity in meta-analysis. 2016. Stat. Med. In Press.

Examples

Run this code

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

## random-effects model of log relative risks
dat <- escalc(measure="RR", ai=tpos, bi=tneg, ci=cpos, di=cneg, data=dat.bcg)
res <- rma(yi, vi, data=dat)

## heterogeneity measures
het <- hetmeta(res)
confint(het)