Sensitivity Analysis for Multiple Biases in Meta-Analyses.

multibiasmeta

multibiasmeta is an R package that provides bias correction and sensitivity analysis for the joint effects of within-study and across-study biases in meta-analysis (per Mathur, 2022).

Installation

You can install multimetabias from CRAN:

install.packages("multibiasmeta")

Or you can install the development version of multibiasmeta from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("mathurlabstanford/multibiasmeta")

Example

Calculate the meta-analytic effect size estimate, correcting for 1) publication bias with an assumed selection ratio of 4 (i.e., affirmative results are 4x more likely to be published than nonaffirmative ones); 2) internal biases with assumed mean values (on the same scale as yi values).

library(multibiasmeta)
multibias_meta(yi = meta_meat$yi, vi = meta_meat$vi, biased = TRUE, selection_ratio = 4,
               bias_affirmative = log(1.5), bias_nonaffirmative = log(1.1))

Calculate how high mean internal bias would need to be to attenuate the effect size estimate to the null, assuming a selection ratio of 4.

multibias_evalue(yi = meta_meat$yi, vi = meta_meat$vi, selection_ratio = 4,
                 biased = !meta_meat$randomized)