aides_vignette

Brief overview

Package aides is planned to support users to do additional analysis or graphics. Users can use functions in aides by calling the library with following syntax:

library(aides)

Feature

Briefly, aides consists of three functions.

Discordance: a newly proposed assumption regarding discordance in rank of study size analysis.
Disparity: a newly proposed assumption regarding disparities in sample size analysis.
Sequential analysis: a method to examine the sufficiency of information size.

Flow and functions

Users can import their data and do relevant tests or graphics using functions in package aides. The present package consists of three functions listed as follows.

Discordance: TestDiscordance().

Disparity: TestDisparity().

Sequential analysis: DoSA().

Discordance:

Step 1. Build or load data.

Step 2. Do discordance test using function TestDiscordance().

Disparity:

Step 1. Build or load data.

Step 2. Do disparity test using function TestDisparity().

Sequential analysis:

Step 1. Build or load data.

Step 2. Do sequential analysis using function DoSA().

Usage and examples

The following steps and syntax demonstrate how user can carry out discordance test.

STEP 1. Import data (example of the study by Fleiss 1993)

library(meta)
data("Fleiss1993bin")
data <- Fleiss1993bin

STEP 2. Process data

data$n  <- data$n.asp + data$n.plac
data$se <- sqrt((1 / data$d.asp) - (1 / data$n.asp) + (1 / data$d.plac) - (1 / data$n.plac))

STEP 3. Test assumption of discordance in study size

output <- TestDiscordance(n = n, 
                          se = se, 
                          study = study,
                          data = data)

STEP 4. Illustrate discordance plot

TestDiscordance(n = n, 
                se = se, 
                study = study, 
                data = data, 
                plot = TRUE)

Output:

#> Warning: package 'meta' was built under R version 4.2.3
#> Loading 'meta' package (version 6.2-1).
#> Type 'help(meta)' for a brief overview.
#> Readers of 'Meta-Analysis with R (Use R!)' should install
#> older version of 'meta' package: https://tinyurl.com/dt4y5drs
#> 
#> 
#> Summary of discordance in ranks test:
#>  Statistics (Bernoulli exact): 2
#>  P-value: 0.423
#>  Note: No significant finding in the test of discordance in study size ranks.

Figure 1. an example of discordance plot