Comparison study of estimators of between-trial variance in trial sequential analysis for random-effects model
WENG Hong
1
,
CAI Lin
2
,
WU Kaijie
3
,
FANG Cheng
1
,
ZENG Guang
4
,
ZENG Xiantao
1,4
,
1. Center for Evidence-Based and Translational Medicine, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University; Center for Evidence-Based and Translational Medicine, Wuhan University; Department of Evidence-Based Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, The Second Clinical Medical College of Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, P.R.China
;
2. Department of Urology, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, 100034, P.R.China
;
3. Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710061, P.R.China
;
4. Department of Urology, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, P.R.China
The assumption of fixed-effects model is based on that the true effect of the each trial is same. However, the assumption of random-effects model is based on that the true effect of included trials is normal distributed. The total variance is equal to the sum of within-trial variance and between-trial variance under the random-effects model. There are many estimators of the between-trial variance. The aim of this paper is to give a brief introduction of the estimators of between-trial variance in trial sequential analysis for random-effects model.
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