Guido Schwarzer is a senior statistician and head of IT at the Institute for Medical Biometry and Statistics at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Germany. He is an established researcher in the area of meta-analysis and lead statistician of several Cochrane reviews. His special interests are in small-study effects in meta-analysis and statistical computing. Guido Schwarzer is an author of the R packages meta, metasens, and netmeta.

James Carpenter studied mathematics at Warwick University and statistics at Oxford University. His principal interests are coping with missing data in complex hierarchical models, sensitivity analysis and meta-analysis, with applications to medical and social data. The collaboration that led to this book began during a sabbatical at Freiburg in 2005-6. James Carpenter is Professor of Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Programme Leader in Methodology at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit,London.

Gerta Rücker is a mathematician, working at the Institute for Medical Biometry and Statistics at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Germany. After having published in chemical graph theory for a number of years, she started working in biostatistics, particularly meta-analysis. Her principal interests are small-study effects and heterogeneity in meta-analysis, meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy studies and application of graph theory in network meta-analysis. She has published a large number of methodological research papers, co-authored a number of Cochrane reviews and is an author of the R package netmeta.

Includes step-by-step tutorials to help the reader to understand and apply meta-analytical methods

Takes readers through all the steps involved in preparing graphical summaries of results, using flexible software written by the authors

Features extensive examples that strike an excellent balance between the how-to of the R code, the statistical methods involved, and discussion of the data and interpretation of the results

Includes chapters on the following advanced topics: publication bias and small study effects; missing data; multivariate meta-analysis, network meta-analysis and meta-analysis of diagnostic studies

Is supported by a supplementary web-resource at www:meta-analysis-with-r.org

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Part I Getting Started: An Introduction to Meta-Analysis in R.- Part II Standard Methods: Fixed Effect and Random Effects Meta-Analysis.- Meta-Analysis with Binary Outcomes.- Heterogeneity and Meta-Regression.- Part III Advanced Topics: Small-Study Effects in Meta-Analysis.- Missing Data in Meta-Analysis.- Multivariate Meta-Analysis.- Network Meta-Analysis.- Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Test Accuracy Studies.- Further Information on R.- Index.