[R-meta] Question on meta-analytic analysis of means

[Gladys Barragan-Jason]

Dear meta community,

I am currently working on a meta-analysis (following PRISMA guidelines)
examining cultural and developmental variations in human–nature
connectedness (HNC). However, I am facing a methodological issue: most of
the literature does not report direct comparisons (e.g., children vs.
adults, or country-to-country contrasts), and therefore I do not have
conventional effect sizes (e.g., standardized mean differences or
correlations). Instead, I extracted descriptive statistics from each study,
including mean HNC, standard deviation, sample size, mean age, percentage
of female participants, country, region, and type of HNC scale. My idea was
to treat the (rescaled) mean HNC values as the outcome and examine
variation across studies using meta-analytic models, but I am unsure
whether this is an appropriate approach given the absence of explicit
comparative effect sizes.

In terms of analysis, I first cleaned and harmonized the dataset (numeric
conversion, country harmonization, etc.), and rescaled HNC scores to a
common metric based on scale ranges (between 0 and 1). I then computed
sampling variances using escalc(measure = "MN") in metafor, effectively
treating each study’s mean as an effect size. I fitted multilevel
meta-analytic models (rma.mv) with study ID and scale as random effects,
and included moderators such as age, gender, region, and scale type. I also
explored publication bias (funnel plots, Egger test) and conducted
moderator analyses (including societal indicators like SDG index and
biodiversity intactness).

My main question is whether this strategy—meta-analyzing means using measure
= "MN" and modeling moderators—is methodologically ok in this context, or
whether I am misusing meta-analytic tools. Should this instead be framed as
a different type of analysis (e.g., meta-regression of descriptive
outcomes, or a multilevel modeling approach rather than meta-analysis)? Are
there recommended alternatives when effect sizes are not directly
available, particularly for cross-cultural and developmental comparisons?
Any guidance or references would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time and help.

Best regards,

Gladys

-- 

------------------------------------------

Gladys Barragan-Jason, PhD.  Website
<https://sites.google.com/view/gladysbarraganjason/home> / Site web
<https://sites.google.com/view/frgladysbarragan-jason/accueil>

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