William R. Shadish
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a list of various www sites (occasionally, just email or snailmail addresses) that pertain to meta-analysis software. I've divided them into two groups, commercial and freeware-careware-shareware, and provided brief annotation of them.

  1. Commercial stand-alone programs (all are general programs unless otherwise noted)
    1. Johnson, B.T. (1993). D-Stat: Software for the meta-analytic review of research literatures (version 1.1). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. (Lawrence Erlbaum, www site: www/erlbaum.com; email: orders@erlbaum.com). Does various meta-analytic statistics including some effect size calculation.
    2. Mullen, B. (1989). Advanced BASIC Meta-Analysis. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. (Lawrence Erlbaum, email: orders@erlbaum.com). Like Johnson.
    3. Michael Bornstein has just finished an excellent program, probably the best of them all. Order information at http://www.PowerAndPrecision.com. Does effect size calculation and meta-analysis, good graphics.
    4. Shadish, W.R., Robinson, L., & Lu, C. (1999). ES: A Computer Program and Manual for Effect Size Calculation. St. Paul, Minnesota: Assessment Systems Corporation.: A program for computing standardized mean difference statistics with over 40 different methods. See http://141.225.14.75/wshadish/es.htm or http://www.assess.com/ES.html.
    5. Lipsey, M.W., & Wilson, D.B. (1996). Practical Meta-Analysis. Newbury Park CA: Sage Publications. This book also makes reference to SPSS, SAS, and STATA macros that implement many analyses, and that can be downloaded for free at http://mason.gmu.edu/~dwilsonb/ma.html. Also available is the authors' EXCEL macros for doing effect size calcuation.
    6. M. Rosenberg, D.C. Adams, J. Gurevitch. (1999). MetaWin: Statistical Software for Meta-Analysis with Resampling Tests (Version 2.0). MetaWin can be ordered from: Sinauer Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 407, Sunderland, Massachusetts 01375-0407; fax: 413-549-1118; e-mail: orders@sinauer.com; internet: http://www.metawinsoft.com/. Costs about $70. Does fixed and random effects models including categorical tests; and it does mixed model regression. Can handle up to 500 studies belonging to 25 classes in each of 10 grouping categories. Unique feature is that it incorporates resampling statistics (percentile bootstrap confidence limits and bias-corrected bootstrap confidence limits), and you can test for differences among classes of studies using a randomization test to evaluate between-group homogeneity.
    7. Eddy, D.M. & Hasselblad, V. (1992). FAST*PRO: Software for Meta-analysis by the Confidence Profile Method. Boston, MA: Academic Press. Note: Book no longer in print, and software may not otherwise be available today.

B. Freeware-Careware-Shareware (all are general programs but some have minimal capacity for effect size calculation):

    1. Meta: Meta-analysis Programs (Vers. 5.3) (1989) [R. Schwarzer]. Raleigh, NC: National Collegiate Software Clearinghouse (http://www.RalfSchwarzer.de)

    2. MA.EXE, by Joseph Cappelleri, Pfizer Central Research, Biometrics Department, Eastern Point Road, Groton, CT 06340 (joseph_c_cappelleri@groton.phiser.com)
    3. MACALC.EXE, by Larry Lyons, Multimedia and CBT Development, Information and Aviation Engineer Group, Advanced Engineering and Research Associates, 1919 South Eads Street, Suite 400, Arlington, Virginia 22203, (solomon@mnsinc.com). Downloadable from http://www.lyonsmorris.com/MetaA/index.htm .
    4. Carlette, W.L. (1987). The meta-analysis effect size calculator: A BASIC program for reconstructing unbiased effect sizes. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 47, 373-384.
    5. EasyMA by M. Cucherat, J.P. Boissel, A. Leizorovicz, M.C. Haugh, P. Nony, & F. Gueyffier. Can be downloaded from http://www.spc.univ-lyon1.fr/~mcu/easyma/. Developed in France for use by clinical pharmacologists to perform meta-analyses of clinical trial data with binary outcomes using fixed or random effects methods.
    6. Meta-Analysis Easy To Answer (META), by David Kenny at the University of Connecticut (http://davidakenny.net/meta.htm). A few fairly simple effect size computations can be done, and weighted or unweighted averages can be computed using any of several systems.
    7. EPIMETA (http://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Software/epimeta/) was written for the Centers for Disease Control and is a DOS program. It has no effect size computation capacity, but does fixed and random effects modeling on epidemiological data (e.g., risk ratios).
    8. Meta-Analyst (1995) [J. Lau]. Boston, MA: New England Medical Center. E-mail: joseph.lau@es.nemc.org

    9. Meta-Test (1997) [J. Lau]. Boston, MA: New England Medical Center. E-mail: joseph.lau@es.nemc.org; http://hiru.mcmaster.ca/cochrane/cochrane/sadt.htm/; http://som.flinders.edu.au/FUSA/Cochrane/COCHRANE/sadt.htm/;

    10. RevMan: The Cochrane Collaboration’s Review Manager (Vers. 5.0) (2001). The Cochrane Collaboration. http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane/revman.htm/.

    11. MetaStat: This software is written by Lawrence M. Rudner, Gene V Glass, David L. Evartt, and Patrick J. Emery, and it does a variety of meta-analytic statistics.It can be downloaded at http://ericae.net/meta/metastat.htm.

    12. http://web.uccs.edu/lbecker/Psy590/escalc3.htm. This www page is devoted to effect size calculation, computing d or r from means and standard deviations, or from t and df.

    13. www.work-learning.com/effect_sizes.htm. This web site allows you to download an excel effect size calculator with basic effect size computation capacity, along with a manual showing the formulas and how to use the program.

    1.  MIX (http://www.mix-for-meta-analysis.info): MIX stands for Meta-analysis with Interactive eXplanations. It is analytical software with extensive educational interactive tutoring. It isespecially meant for students and teachers, although it provides professional numerical and graphical output and, besides analyzing thebuilt-in data sets, one can also enter one's own data.

       

C. Meta-analysis macros in general packages (I thank Julio Sanchez-Meca for forwarding this information to me). :

  1. BUGS y WinBUGS.  http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk//bugs/.

  2. R. http://cran.r-project.org/.

  3. SAS® . Wang, M.C. & Bushman, B.J. (1999). Integrating Results through Meta-analytic Review Using SAS(R) Software. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc. Kus, O. & Koch, A. (1996). Meta-analysis macros for SAS. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 22, 325-333. http://www.prw.le.ac.uk/epidemio/personal/ajs22/meta/macros.sas/. http://www.sas.com/.

  4. SPSS. The Lipsey and Wilson macros described in A.5. above. See http://www.wam.umd.edu/~wilsondb/ma.html.

  5. S-Plus. http://www.mathsoft.com/splus/. http://www.prw.le.ac.uk/epidemio/personal/ajs22/meta/routine.html/. http://www.research.att.com/~dumouchel/bsoft.html/.

  6. StataTM. Sterne, J.A.C., Bradburn, M.J. & Egger, M. (2001). Meta-analysis in StataTM. In M. Egger, G. Davey Smith & D.G. Altmann (Eds.), Systematic Reviews in Health Care: Meta-analysis in Context (pp. 347-369). London, UK: BMJ Pub. Group. http://www.stata.com/.

  7. StatsDirect. http://www.camcode.com/.

  8. StatXact. http://www.cytel.com/statxact

  9. True Epistat. Epistat Services, 2011 Cap Rock Circle, Richardson TX 75080-3417, phone: (214) 680-1376 (Note, this address is old, and True Epistat may not be available today).

D. Reviews of meta-analytic software: (I thank Julio Sanchez-Meca for forwarding this information to me). An updated list of meta-analytic software reviews can be found at http://www.prw.le.ac.uk/epidemio/personal/ajs22/meta/ .

  1. Arthur, W., Bennett, W. & Huffcutt, A. (1994). Choice of software and programs in meta-analysis research: Does it make a difference? Educational & Psychological Measurement, 54, 776-787.

  2.  Egger, M., Sterne, J.A.C. & Davey Smith, G. (2000). Meta-analysis software. British Medical Journal, 316.

  3. http://www.bmj.com/archive/7126/7126ed9.htm/ (accesed 21.11.2000).

  4.  Normand, S.L. (1995). Meta-analysis software: A comparative review. American Statistician, 49, 298-309.

  5.  Sterne, J.A.C., Egger, M. & Sutton, A.J. (2001). Meta-analysis software. In M. Egger, G. Davey Smith & D.G. Altmann (Eds.), Systematic Reviews in Health Care: Meta-analysis in Context (pp. 336-346). London: BMJ Pub. Group.

  6.  Sutton, A.J., Lambert, P.C., Hellmich, M., et al. (2000). Meta-analysis in practice: A critical review of available software. In D.A. Berry & D.K. Stangl (Eds.), Meta-analysis in Medicine and Health Policy. New York: Marcel Dekker.

E. Miscellaneous

  1. http://ericae.net/meta/ This site has a variety of links to resources for those who are interested in meta-analysis. Some of these links include software.
  2. http://www.prw.le.ac.uk/epidemio/personal/ajs22/meta/. This link also has a variety of pertinent links.

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