Agenda » Learning objectives
Course learning objectives
Basic course
The objective of this course is to introduce students to the logic of a basic meta-analysis and teach them how to perform a meta-analysis, critique a meta-analysis, and avoid common mistakes in meta-analysis. By the end of the course students will understand
- The goals of a meta-analysis
- How to choose a statistical model
- How to choose an effect-size index
- How to enter data for a simple meta-analysis
- How to estimate the mean effect size
- How to quantify and understand heterogeneity in effects
- How to report the results of the analysis
- How to create forest plots
- How to create plots that show the distribution of true effects
- How to avoid common mistakes in all these areas
Advanced course
The objective of this course is to teach students advanced issues in meta-analysis. By the end of the course the student will understand
- How to use subgroup analyses to compare the impact of a treatment in sets of studies that enrolled different populations or employed different variants of an intervention (analogous to ANOVA in a primary study)
- How to use meta-regression to assess the unique impact of continuous or categorical covariates on the effect size (analogous to multiple-regression in a primary study)
- How to assess the potential impact of publication bias on the analysis
- What to do when there are only a small number of studies in the analysis
- How to avoid common mistakes in all these areas
Testimonials
"Michael is an excellent presenter. Although being a complete novice to the subject, I left the course with a thorough understanding of the topic and a real desire to apply it to my own area of work, which is research in the agri-food sector in Northern Ireland."
Alan Gordon - Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute
"This course really delivered beyond my expectations. On the one hand, the course explains the science behind Meta-Analysis. Then on the other hand, the course teaches how to use the CMA program to perform the analysis. Dr. Michael Borenstein uses easy to understand examples to teach the principles of Meta-Analysis. The section on heterogeneity was excellent. I appreciate how he uses simple logic to teach these principles."
David R. Rutledge - Global Strategic Solutions - Los Angeles 2019