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[R-meta] sample size correlations for meta-analysis

2 messages · Catia Oliveira, Michael Dewey

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Dear all,

I hope this email finds you well.
I was wondering if anyone has ever published or seen a published paper that
reflects on the minimum sample size for correlations to be used in
meta-analysis? We may need to look at the raw data to see if participants
fit the inclusion criteria, leaving us with very small sample sizes, so we
want to establish what would be too small to reject. I know we need to
ensure that the sample size needs to be big enough to allow for estimating
the correlation and its confidence interval, but is that enough?

Thank you!

Best wishes,

Catia
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Dear Catia

When I review papers for journals I often find authors have excluded 
small studi where small usually means n<10. When I query this on the 
grounds that the variance will take care of the weighting I never get an 
evidence-based reply so I suspect it is just an arbitrary limit. Of 
course it is hard to pprove a negative and someone else may have a 
source justifying the practice.

Michael
On 15/07/2023 17:00, Catia Oliveira via R-sig-meta-analysis wrote: