The application of network meta-analysis is becoming increasingly widespread, and for a successful implementation, it requires that the direct comparison result and the indirect comparison result should be consistent. Because of this, a proper detection of inconsistency is often a key issue in network meta-analysis as whether the results can be…

A common problem in the analysis of multiple data sources, including individual participant data meta-analysis (IPD-MA), is the misclassification of binary variables. Misclassification may lead to biased estimators of model parameters, even when the misclassification is entirely random. We aimed to develop statistical methods that facilitate…

In Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis, the use of weakly informative prior distributions is of particular benefit in cases where only a few studies are included, a situation often encountered in health technology assessment (HTA). Suggestions for empirical prior distributions are available in the literature but it is unknown whether these are…

The product Bayes factor (PBF) synthesizes evidence for an informative hypothesis across heterogeneous replication studies. It can be used when fixed- or random effects meta-analysis fall short. For example, when effect sizes are incomparable and cannot be pooled, or when studies diverge significantly in the populations, study designs, and…

When meta-analyzing heterogeneous bodies of literature, meta-regression can be used to account for potentially relevant between-studies differences. A key challenge is that the number of candidate moderators is often high relative to the number of studies. This introduces risks of overfitting, spurious results, and model non-convergence. To…

Network meta-analysis is a popular method to synthesize the information obtained in a systematic review of studies (e.g., randomized clinical trials) involving subsets of multiple treatments of interest. The dominant method of analysis employs within-study information on treatment contrasts and integrates this over a network of studies. One…

This paper proposes a new method to evaluate informative hypotheses for meta-analysis of Cronbach's coefficient alpha using a Bayesian approach. The coefficient alpha is one of the most widely used reliability indices. In meta-analyses of reliability, researchers typically form specific informative hypotheses beforehand, such as "alpha of…