Agenda:
Many alternative methods have been developed for calculating the summary effect, heterogeneity variance and their allied confidence intervals in a meta-analysis. The performance of the methods may vary depending on the characteristics of the meta-analysis (e.g., number and size of the included studies). Currently, the DerSimonian and Laird method is the only random-effects model available in Review Manager (RevMan). In this video lecture and the virtual workshop, we will discuss random-effects methods recommended by the Cochrane Statistical Methods Group to be implemented in RevMan. In particular, we will focus on recommendations for the heterogeneity variance estimators and the confidence interval methods for the summary effect.