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Amit K. Chowdhry, Book Review of Applied Meta-Analysis with R and Stata, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society, Volume 185, Issue 2, April 2022, Pages 728–729, https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12776
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A systematic review with meta-analysis of well-conducted randomized studies is often considered highest form of evidence. However, there are methodological concerns with many of the meta-analyses of both randomized and non-randomized studies published in academic journals. Therefore, it is important that students and researchers have good resources to help guide them in the proper way to analyse meta-analysis data. This book provides an excellent introduction to the practitioner for performing a meta-analysis in R and Stata. It does not require that one is an expert in either language, though general familiarity with statistical programming languages, or at least programming in general would be desirable in order to use the book effectively. The level of this book is appropriate for an undergraduate or graduate level course in applied meta-analysis. It is also useful as a reference for researchers performing applied meta-analyses. While much of the information regarding statistical packages available in R and Stata for meta-analysis is available online in statistical package reference manuals, this book nicely organizes the information and presents the formulae and code alongside each other. In contrast to some applied texts on meta-analysis and many statistical package reference manuals, the formulae provided are sufficient to understand what each of the procedures are doing, though as would be expected for an applied text, detailed proofs are not generally provided. I would have found this book very helpful if I had it early on when working on my PhD on meta-analysis methods. The book’s prose is succinct and clear. It is important to note that this book focuses primarily on the statistical methods used in meta-analysis, but does not cover the important non-statistical issues in detail. Therefore, if one is conducting a meta-analysis, it is recommended that one also refer to another book such as the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions for more thorough coverage of non-statistical topics. In summary, this book will be accessible from the upper-level undergraduate level and above, and is highly recommended for applied researchers interested in conducting meta-analyses.