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[R-meta] Bivariate generalized linear mixed model with {metafor}

2 messages · Arthur Albuquerque, Wolfgang Viechtbauer

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Dear Wolfgang,

We had this discussion back in October, so you might not remember. In brief, I wanted to fit a Bivariate model and you pointed towards the Model 6 in your excellent article:

Jackson, D., Law, M., Stijnen, T., Viechtbauer, W., & White, I. R. (2018). A comparison of seven random-effects models for meta-analyses that estimate the summary odds ratio. Statistics in Medicine, 37(7), 1059-1085. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.7588

In this article, you fitted the model using the command:

lme4::glmer(cbind(event,n-event)~factor(treat)+(control+treat-1|study), data=thedata1, family=binomial(link="logit"))

Today, I found a page in your metafor webpage (http://www.metafor-project.org/doku.php/analyses:vanhouwelingen2002), fitting the same Model 6 mentioned above. However, you used metafor, not lme4 (of course), and the random effect structure seems a little bit different:

res <- rma.mv(yi, vi, mods = ~ group - 1, random = ~ group | trial, struct="UN", data=dat.long, method="ML")

Thus, I would like to first confirm if they are indeed the same model. If not, what are their differences and what would be major implications?

Thank you very much,

Arthur M. Albuquerque

Medical student
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
On Oct 18, 2021, 2:53 PM -0300, Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP) <wolfgang.viechtbauer at maastrichtuniversity.nl>, wrote:

  
  
9 days later
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Dear Arthur,

I can't dig through these details as I need to limit my computer usage to a minimum at this time due to a broken arm/wrist.

But I recently have added additional functionality to rma.glmm() that allows one to fit all models described in that article:

https://wviechtb.github.io/metafor/reference/rma.glmm.html

See arguments 'coding' and 'cor'.

Best,
Wolfgang