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Effect-Size Indices for Dichotomized Outcomes in Meta-Analysis.

2003; American Psychological Association; Volume: 8; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/1082-989x.8.4.448

1939-1463

Julio Sánchez‐Meca, Fulgencio Marín‐Martínez, Salvador Chacón Moscoso,

Meta-analysis and systematic reviews

It is very common to find meta-analyses in which some of the studies compare 2 groups on continuous dependent variables and others compare groups on dichotomized variables. Integrating all of them in a meta-analysis requires an effect-size index in the same metric that can be applied to both types of outcomes. In this article, the performance in terms of bias and sampling variance of 7 different effect-size indices for estimating the population standardized mean difference from a 2 x 2 table is examined by Monte Carlo simulation, assuming normal and nonnormal distributions. The results show good performance for 2 indices, one based on the probit transformation and the other based on the logistic distribution.