[R-meta] Preregistering publication bias analysis

Lena Schäfer |en@@ch@e|er2304 @end|ng |rom gm@||@com
Tue Dec 22 18:10:57 CET 2020


Hello everyone, 

We are looking for advice on preregistering publication bias analysis for a meta-analysis. Our data set consists of 187 effect sizes nested in 53 studies and we will account for the statistical dependency using robumeta. Forty of the 53 studies are published. To fulfill the assumption of statistical independence required for most publication bias analysis, we will randomly sample one effect size from each study, conduct the publication bias evaluation test on the set of 40 independent effect sizes, repeat the procedure 1000 times, and report the median as well as a histogram of the full distribution as an indicator of publication bias.  

We initially planned to use the following procedures to assess publication bias: 

Regression model with publication status (published vs unpublished) as a moderator
Vevea and Hedges’ (1995) three-parameter model with a one-sided cut-off parameter at p < .05 (assumes that authors selectively published significantly positive effects)
Funnel-plot based methods
visual inspection of funnel plots (Light & Pillemer, 2009)
Egger’s test of funnel plot asymmetry (Egger et al., 1997)
trim-and-fill procedure(Duval & Tweedie, 2000)

Given the superiority of Vevea and Hedges’ three-parameter model (1995) over funnel-plot based approaches (Lau et al., 2006; McShane et al., 2016), especially when there is high heterogeneity, we planned trust the conclusions of the former one in the case of inconsistency between the conclusions of different methods for detecting publication bias.

However, if we 'pre-commit’ to Vevea and Hedges’ three-parameter model (1995), does it even make sense to run the remaining analyses? 

Finally, is it justifiable to estimate we Vevea and Hedges’ three-parameter model (1995) on a data set consisting of 40 studies? If not, what would be a good alternative (e.g., Vevea and Woods, 2005)?

We are basically looking for ’state-of-the-art’ guidelines for pre-registering publication bias analysis for a relatively small sample size of nested data. Please let me know if you need any further information!

Thank you so much for your thoughts in advance!

Best wishes, 
Lena


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]



More information about the R-sig-meta-analysis mailing list