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Outlier and influence diagnostics for meta-analysis
Wolfgang Viechtbauer1, Mike W-L Cheung2
1Department of Methodology and Statistics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. wolfgang.viechtbauer@stat.unimaas.nl.
Abstract:
The presence of outliers and influential cases may affect the validity and robustness of the conclusions from a meta-analysis. While researchers generally agree that it is necessary to examine outlier and influential case diagnostics when conducting a meta-analysis, limited studies have addressed how to obtain such diagnostic measures in the context of a meta-analysis. The present paper extends standard diagnostic procedures developed for linear regression analyses to the meta-analytic fixed- and random/mixed-effects models. Three examples are used to illustrate the usefulness of these procedures in various research settings. Issues related to these diagnostic procedures in meta-analysis are also discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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