Understanding Meta-Analysis Through Data Simulation With Applications to Power Analysis

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool to combine evidence from existing literature. Despite several introductory and advanced materials about organizing, conducting, and reporting a meta-analysis, to our knowledge, there are no introductive materials about simulating the most common meta-analysis models. Data simulation is essential for developing and validating new statistical models and procedures. Furthermore, data simulation is a powerful educational tool for understanding a statistical method. In this tutorial, we show how to simulate equal-effects, random-effects, and metaregression models and illustrate how to estimate statistical power. Simulations for multilevel and multivariate models are available in the Supplemental Material available online. All materials associated with this article can be accessed on OSF (https://osf.io/54djn/).