1, confirm the product.
When we have an idea and then decide what kind of products to produce, it is the process of selecting topics for our meta-analysis papers. After some research, I decided to produce orange juice, because orange is a low-cost fruit, and there are few drinks with high orange meat content in the market at present, so the orange juice produced will be a competitive and marketable product.
This means that when we want to write a meta-analysis paper, we should pay attention to the current research vacancy, so that such a meta-analysis paper will be easier to publish and more competitive.
2, looking for raw materials
After determining the production direction, I need to visit the orange planting base to find satisfactory oranges. Because I don't know where oranges meet my needs best, I bought oranges from every town in my hometown This is equivalent to the document retrieval link in the process of writing a meta-analysis paper, searching the database comprehensively, and not missing every relevant document.
Common English databases are: PubMed, Embase, webof science, MEDLINE, Ovid, ScienceDirect, Cochrane, etc. Chinese databases are mainly Wanfang, VIP and HowNet. Writing a meta-analysis paper requires a relatively large amount of work and time to retrieve this link!
3. Screening varieties
Find as many varieties of oranges as possible, and then I need to taste and select the varieties of oranges I need one by one according to my plan to determine the source of goods. First of all, oranges must be full of fruits, excluding a batch of oranges with insufficient water, sour taste and high price, and the rest is what I need. This step is the step of formulating admission criteria in the process of meta-analysis thesis writing. This step needs to analyze the topic of the thesis according to meta-analysis and formulate admission criteria according to the specific situation.
4. Conduct procurement evaluation
After selecting the raw material supplier, I need to go to the planting base to purchase the oranges I need, and issue a raw material quality grade table, so that my consumers can rest assured to drink my orange juice in the future.
The purchase, selection and evaluation of oranges are the steps of literature quality evaluation in the process of writing meta-analysis papers. The quality of an orange directly affects the quality of a bottle of orange juice, and the quality of the collected literature will also directly affect the quality of our final meta-analysis paper. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the quality of each document, so that readers can fully understand the quality of the included documents and feel free to "eat" this meta-analysis paper.
5, production-peeling meat.
With raw oranges, the next step is to peel and cut the oranges and take out the pulp.
This step is equivalent to the information extraction step of writing a meta-analysis paper. When writing a meta-analysis paper, all the collected documents are complete papers, but what we actually need to analyze is the research data and research methods in the documents, so we must extract the data through tables.
6. Production-juicing
With pulp, it's simple. Pour the materials directly into the machine and let the machine juice for us.
Similarly, it is relatively simple to include data in meta-analysis papers. Just throw the data into the software and let the software analyze it for us. This step is the data synthesis step of writing a meta-analysis paper. STATA, r language, RevMan and other software can do it.
7, test-exclude heterogeneity
After juicing is completed, we need to send the orange juice for inspection, so that relevant institutions can detect whether our orange juice contains other impurities and issue a certificate for us, so that consumers can buy our products with confidence.
This step is also needed when writing MetMeta analysis paper, and the conclusion of Meta analysis paper is drawn through comprehensive analysis. We also need to detect the differences between documents, determine the degree of heterogeneity of documents, and judge whether the conclusions are credible.
Because in the synthesis stage, we mix Meta together for analysis. If the two documents we extracted are very different, then we will directly mix them and analyze them, and the result will be very wrong, which may lead to the lack of research significance in our meta-analysis paper.
This step is the heterogeneity test of our meta-analysis papers. If there is a big heterogeneity in the conclusion obtained through heterogeneity test, it is necessary to further analyze the source of heterogeneity, exclude heterogeneity, and choose different effect models for comprehensive integration again.
8. Eliminate the risk of fraud
At this time, I got a batch of delicious orange juice, but new problems appeared. How can we ensure the stability of orange juice taste and ensure that there are no other influencing factors in orange juice? So in order to ensure the stability of the products and quality after the last batch of production, I bought another batch of oranges, excluded some seemingly unreliable suppliers' raw materials, or added a production line with different juicing techniques to reproduce orange juice.
If the taste changes little every time, it proves that my production process is stable and reliable, and the quality of oranges is uniform, I can realize mass production; On the contrary, if one of them is changed, the taste will change greatly, and the taste of my orange juice will be greatly affected, which shows that one of the influencing factors has a great influence, and it is necessary to further test these influencing factors in order to realize stable batch production.
This is equivalent Meta the sensitivity analysis in meta-analysis papers. Sensitivity analysis refers to changing the inclusion criteria (especially controversial studies), excluding low-quality studies, analyzing the same data with different statistical methods/models, and observing the changes of merger indicators. If a document is excluded, it is considered sensitive to merge RR, and vice versa.
9. Eliminate hidden risks
Finally, when testing the production quality, we only bought a small batch of oranges, and the supplier gave us big and good oranges, and the produced results were stable and reliable, with good taste. What about the other smaller and lower quality oranges that we didn't get?
It is not excluded that some suppliers just show the good products to the ordering party for cooperation, and deliberately hide the differences between products. So in the end, we just need to reconfirm whether the quality of suppliers is stable, and deliberately show the good ones and avoid the bad ones. If not, we can achieve mass production.
When writing a meta-analysis paper, this is the last step to evaluate the publication bias. Orange juice tastes good because you choose a good orange that the supplier can give you, but there may not be such a perfect orange in actual production.
Similarly, in medical statistical research, positive results are often easier to publish than negative results, so the documents we include may be because "good quality" documents are provided to us, and we need to consider whether those unpublished "slightly worse" documents will affect our results. The test can be realized by evaluating whether the funnel graph is asymmetric, identifying the publication bias, using Begg and Egger methods to test the symmetry of the funnel graph, Trim method and unsafe number method.
10, the production investigation phase is over.
So far, we have basically completed the construction of the factory. Of course, we still need to expand the market, marketing and after-sales to truly realize the operation of the enterprise, which is similar to the writing, format and typesetting of subsequent meta-analysis papers, but the most important "products" have been produced. As long as the product is hard enough, the follow-up is very simple ~
Writing a meta-analysis paper has strict process requirements. If you really want to publish a meta-analysis paper this year, Bian Xiao still suggests that you arrange systematic meta-analysis research as far as possible to avoid delaying the research progress because of the nonstandard research.