Contents
What are subgroups in research?
About the “What researchers mean by…” Subgroup analysis is one way of finding out. It’s a type of analysis done by breaking down study samples into subsets of participants based on a shared characteristic. The goal is to explore differences in how people respond to an intervention.
What is subset analysis?
uh-NA-lih-sis) In a clinical study, the evaluation of results for some but not all of the patients who participated. The selected patients have one or more characteristics in common, such as the same stage of disease or the same hormone receptor status.
What is subgroup effect?
Subgroup analyses are common and often associated with claims of difference of treatment effects between subgroups—termed “subgroup effect”, “effect modification”, or “interaction between a subgroup variable and treatment”. Debates about subgroup effects may be framed in terms of absolute acceptance or rejection.
What are subgroups in statistics?
What is a subgroup? A subgroup is a group of units that are created under the same set of conditions. Subgroups (or rational subgroups) represent a “snapshot” of the process. Therefore, the measurements within a subgroup must be taken close together in time but still be independent of each other.
What is meta-regression analysis?
Meta-regression is an extension to subgroup analyses that allows the effect of continuous, as well as categorical, characteristics to be investigated, and in principle allows the effects of multiple factors to be investigated simultaneously (although this is rarely possible due to inadequate numbers of studies) ( …
What is the difference between subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis?
Sensitivity analyses are sometimes confused with subgroup analysis. First, sensitivity analyses do not attempt to estimate the effect of the intervention in the group of studies removed from the analysis, whereas in subgroup analyses, estimates are produced for each subgroup.
What is the problem with subgroup analysis?
One of the problems with subgroup analysis is the increased likelihood of a statistically significant false positive result. The more groups you investigate, the more likely you are to find a statistically significant effect by chance.
What is an example of a subgroup?
A subgroup of a group G is a subset of G that forms a group with the same law of composition. For example, the even numbers form a subgroup of the group of integers with group law of addition. It need not necessarily have any other subgroups however; for example, Z5 has no nontrivial proper subgroup. …
How is a subgroup analysis different from a normal meta-analysis?
This assumes that studies within a subgroup are drawn from a universe of populations, the mean of which we want to estimate. The difference to a normal meta-analysis is that we conduct several separate random-effects meta-analyses, one for each subgroup.
What do you call a subgroup analysis in R?
Borenstein and Higgins call the model for subgroup analyses the fixed-effects (plural) model. The word “plural” is added because we have to differentiate it from the standard fixed-effect model. The fixed-effects (plural) model can be seen like a hybrid creature, including features of both the fixed-effect model and the random-effects model.
How is heterogeneity used in a subgroup analysis?
In subgroup analyses, we see heterogeneity not merely as a nuisance, but as interesting variation which may or may not be explainable by a scientific hypothesis. In the best case, this can further our understanding of the world around us, or at least produce practical insights that guide future decision-making.
When does subgroup analysis test the null hypothesis?
It tests the null hypothesis that all subgroup effect sizes are equal, and is significant when at least two subgroups, or combinations thereof, differ. While we normally assume that studies within the subgroups behave according to the random-effects model, the situation looks different on the pooled subgroup level.