[R-meta] Test statistics for variance components in multivariate meta-analysis and interpretation of the output

[Acar, Selcuk]

Hi,

I am using metafor package for my three level (study, sample, effect size levels) multivariate meta-analysis. I was trying to figure out how to get confidence intervals and I think I figured out. I could get the output below via "confint". However, there are two things I need to know:

1) How do I obtain test statistics for the variance components? Is there a practical way to do that in metafor package?
2) I know that sigma^2.1, sigma^2.2 and sigma^2.3 are the variance components at three different
levels. But, I do not know what "sigma.1" "sigma.2" and "sigma.3" represent (see the output below).

 confint(MVmodel_null, digits=3)

          estimate ci.lb ci.ub
sigma^2.1    0.006 0.000 0.020
sigma.1      0.080 0.000 0.143

          estimate ci.lb ci.ub
sigma^2.2    0.019 0.008 0.033
sigma.2      0.137 0.091 0.181

          estimate ci.lb ci.ub
sigma^2.3    0.011 0.009 0.013
sigma.3      0.106 0.097 0.115

Can you please help with those questions?

Selcuk Acar, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Educational Psychology
University of North Texas

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