title: Investigating the assumption of homogeneity of treatment effects in clinical studies with application to meta-analysis.
abstract: An important part of the evaluation of a therapy is an investigation of the assumption of homogeneity of its effect across pre-defined subpopulations. In this paper we describe simple graphical presentations that could be used to assess the homogeneity of treatment effect and identify outliers. The emphasis in the paper is on meta-analysis but the methods described can be generalized to other investigations.
authors.affiliation: Medical Statistics Group, ScHARR, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. s.a.julious@sheffield.ac.uk
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Julious
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Whitehead
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011336:Probability; D035842:Research Subjects; D016896:Treatment Outcome