[R-meta] Dear Wolfgang

[Ju Lee]

Dear Wolfgang,

I hope you are well these days.

I had some general questions related to the data structure in mixed-effect models.
We are currently working with data extracted from pee-reviewed papers as well as big data extracted from state or agency surveys.
The issue we have is although we are including only 2-3 agency studies, each study can generate up to 1000-9000 effect sizes due to the abundance of data they produced.

Conversely, the data collected from peer-reviewed articles are much smaller than that perhaps < 800 effect sizes combined. My co-authors want to use those agency data, but I am very concerned that including those data makes sense.

So the question is:

  1.  Is it even reasonable to consider including such few studies that will pretty much dominate the entire data?
  2.  Can common mixed-effect model approaches with study random factor account for such disproportionate contribution of few studies?

It would be extremely helpful to hear your perspectives.
Thank you

Best,
JU

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