Using network analysis to analyse review findings
I'm a Masters student and am completing a systematic literature review. I want to analyse the findings across studies specifically looking at subtypes of a condition and their associations with health outcomes across four domains. There is a lot of variation in health outcomes within domains and I have effect sizes, beta values, and ORs. How on earth do I go about this? I don't think there's enough consistency for a meta-analysis/forest plot. I'm thinking a separate analysis for each domain. My supervisor suggested network analysis but I'm really unsure how to set up the data set. Any help would be appreciated!
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I've asked our expert for his insights...
Hi,
There are many possible approaches to this - one of them is indeed a network analysis (which is not supported in JASP yet) but you could also do subgroup/meta-regression analyses for each domain/condition and include random effects for additional sources of heterogeneity, like drug/treatment effects etc. This is quite a complex question, though and I can't really provide a more elaborate answer without much more details. I would recommend checking the documentation of the metafor package - pretty much all meta-regression / multivariate models are implemented in JASP and the helpfiles might help you identify what functionality you are searching for.
Cheers,
Frantisek