Integration Methods of Odds Ratio Based on Meta-Analysis Using Fixed and Random Effect Models Useful in Public Health

Meta-analysis integrates information from different studies to generate a common response to a determined problem. In the literature, we find several integration methods of results, with the integration method of levels of probability being the more basic and, with a greater complexity, the integration method of the effect size, which uses fixed and random effect models. In this study, we compare the results of two estimation methods of the effect size based on meta-analysis using fixed and random effect models. The measure of the effect size considered here is the odds ratio, due to this measure is frequently used in systematic reviews of several topics of interest in public health, such as heart diseases, laparoscopic colectomy, Parkinson disease, tobacco addiction and uterine cervical cancer. Conclusions of this work indicate the applicability conditions of the analyzed estimators of the odds ratio in function of the size of the population effect, of the variability among studies, of the size of the meta-analysis and of the sample sizes of such studies.