Meta-analytic Techniques Research Articles

Use of oral polio vaccine and the incidence of COVID-19 in the world.

Several live attenuated vaccines were shown to provide temporary protection against a variety of infectious diseases through stimulation of the host innate immune system. To test the hypothesis that countries using oral polio vaccine (OPV) have a lower cumulative number of cases diagnosed with COVID-19 per 100,000 population (CP100K) compared with those using only inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). In an ecological study, the CP100K was compared between countries using OPV vs IPV. We used a random-effect meta-analysis technique to estimate the pooled mean for CP100K. We also used negative binomial regression with CP100K as the dependent variable and the human development index (HDI) and the type of vaccine used as independent variables. The pooled estimated mean CP100K was 4970 (95% CI 4030 to 5900) cases per 100,000 population for countries using IPV, significantly (p<0.001) higher than that for countries using OPV-1580 (1190 to 1960). Countries with higher HDI prefer to use IPV; those with lower HDI commonly use OPV. Both HDI and the type of vaccine were independent predictors of CP100K. Use of OPV compared to IPV could independently decrease the CP100K by an average of 30% at the mean HDI of 0.72. Countries using OPV have a lower incidence of COVID-19 compared to those using IPV. This might suggest that OPV may either prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection at individual level or slow down the transmission at the community level.

Training Individuals to Implement Discrete Trials with Fidelity: A Meta-Analysis

Discrete trial training is a popular teaching method for individuals with autism, but it is not easily implemented with fidelity due to its complexity. This is the first meta-analysis of single-case experimental design studies to quantify the impact of behavioral skills training on individuals’ ability to implement discrete trials with fidelity. Furthermore, this meta-analysis examines the four training methods that make up behavioral skills training—feedback, instruction, modeling, and rehearsal—to determine the “active ingredients” of behavioral skills training. A total of 46 single-case experimental design studies are included in this meta-analysis. Hierarchical linear modeling, which has the ability to analyze clustered data, is the meta-analytic technique used to estimate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training across studies. Results show that behavioral skills training has a statistically significant positive effect on discrete trial training implementation fidelity; therefore, behavior skills training is recommended for discrete trial training implementation instruction.

Removing climbers more than doubles tree growth and biomass in degraded tropical forests.

Huge areas of tropical forests are degraded, reducing their biodiversity, carbon, and timber value. The recovery of these degraded forests can be significantly inhibited by climbing plants such as lianas. Removal of super‐abundant climbers thus represents a restoration action with huge potential for application across the tropics. While experimental studies largely report positive impacts of climber removal on tree growth and biomass accumulation, the efficacy of climber removal varies widely, with high uncertainty as to where and how to apply the technique. Using meta‐analytic techniques, we synthesize results from 26 studies to quantify the efficacy of climber removal for promoting tree growth and biomass accumulation. We find that climber removal increases tree growth by 156% and biomass accumulation by 209% compared to untreated forest, and that efficacy remains for at least 19 years. Extrapolating from these results, climber removal could sequester an additional 32 Gigatons of CO2 over 10 years, at low cost, across regrowth, and production forests. Our analysis also revealed that climber removal studies are concentrated in the Neotropics (N = 22), relative to Africa (N = 2) and Asia (N = 2), preventing our study from assessing the influence of region on removal efficacy. While we found some evidence that enhancement of tree growth and AGB accumulation varies across disturbance context and removal method, but not across climate, the number and geographical distribution of studies limits the strength of these conclusions. Climber removal could contribute significantly to reducing global carbon emissions and enhancing the timber and biomass stocks of degraded forests, ultimately protecting them from conversion. However, we urgently need to assess the efficacy of removal outside the Neotropics, and consider the potential negative consequences of climber removal under drought conditions and for biodiversity.

Self-management interventions for reducing challenging behaviors among school-age students: A systematic review.

Challenging classroom behaviors can interfere with student social and academic functioning and may be harmful to everyone in schools. Self-management interventions within schools can address these concerns by helping students develop necessary social, emotional, and behavioral skills. Thus, the current systematic review synthesized and analyzed school-based self-management interventions used to address challenging classroom behaviors. The current study aimed to inform practice and policy by (a) evaluating the effectiveness of self-management interventions at improving classroom behaviors and academic outcomes and (b) examining the state of research for self-management interventions based on existing literature. Comprehensive search procedures included electronically searching online databases (e.g., EBSCO Academic Search Premier, MEDLINE, ERIC, PsycINFO), hand-searching 19 relevant journals (e.g., School Mental Health, Journal of School Psychology), reference-list searching 21 relevant reviews, and searching gray literature (e.g., contacting authors, searching online dissertation/theses databases and national government clearinghouses/websites). Searches were completed through December of 2020. Included studies employed either a multiple group-design (i.e., experimental or quasi-experimental) or single-case experimental research design and met the following criteria: (a) utilized a self-management intervention, (b) conducted in a school setting, (c) included school-aged students, and (d) assessed classroom behaviors. Standard data collection procedures expected by the Campbell Collaboration were used in the current study. Analyses for single-case design studies incorporated three-level hierarchical models to synthesize main effects, and meta-regression for moderation. Further, robust variance estimation was applied to both single-case design and group-design studies to account for dependency issues. Our final single-case design sample included 75 studies, 236 participants, and 456 effects (i.e., 351 behavioral outcomes and 105 academic outcomes). Our final group-design sample included 4 studies, 422 participants, and 11 total behavioral effects. Most studies occurred in the United States, in urban communities, in public schools, and in elementary settings. Single-case design results indicated that self-management interventions significantly and positively impacted both student classroom behaviors (LRRi = 0.69, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.59, 0.78]) and academic outcomes (LRRi = 0.58, 95% CI [0.41, 0.76]). Single-case results were found to be moderated by student race and special education status, whereas intervention effects were more pronounced for African American students (F = 5.56, p = 0.02) and students receiving special education services (F = 6.87, p = 0.01). Single-case results were not found to be moderated by intervention characteristics (i.e., intervention duration, fidelity assessment, fidelity method, or training). Despite positive findings for single-case design studies, risk of bias assessment indicated methodological shortcomings that should be considered when interpreting findings. A significant main effect of self-management interventions for improving classroom behaviors was also revealed for group-design studies (g = 0.63, 95% CI [0.08, 1.17]). However, these results should be interpreted with caution given the small number of included group-design studies. The current study, conducted using comprehensive search/screening procedures and advanced meta-analytic techniques, adds to the large amount of evidence indicating that self-management interventions can be successfully used to address student behaviors and academic outcomes. In particular, the use specific self-management elements (i.e., self-determining a performance goal, self-observing and recording progress, reflecting on a target behavior, and administering primary reinforcers) should be considered within current interventions as well as in the development of future interventions. Future research should aim to assess the implementation and effects of self-management at the group or classroom-level within randomized controlled trials.

The neural activities of different emotion carriers and their similarities and differences: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies

<p id=C6>Emotion recognition has always been a hot topic in psychology. Although some studies have explored the brain mechanisms of dynamic facial expressions, dynamic bodily expressions and emotional voices, empirical studies have their own inevitable defects, which may lead to low statistical test power and effect size and inconsistent results. In addition, the existing meta-analyses of the three emotion carriers still have some deficiencies. Therefore, at present, the overall understanding of the three emotion carriers is relatively incomplete, and the commonness and differences of neural mechanisms among different emotion carriers were still poorly known. So, based on the background of high ecological validity, this study adopted the meta-analysis technique based on large-scale data synthesis method to overcome the above shortcomings. First, three separated activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses were used to identify the brain regions activated by each emotion pattern, and then conjunction and contrast analysis of these activation maps were used to assess common and unique neural activity between the three emotion carriers. It is the first time that meta-analysis is used to explore the brain mechanism of dynamic bodily expressions, and it is also the first time that meta-analysis is used to explore the similarities and differences of neural activity among three emotion carriers: dynamic facial expressions, dynamic bodily expressions and emotional voices, and further improves the overall understanding of the neural mechanisms of dynamic facial expressions and emotional voices by previous meta-analyses. The results of single meta-analysis showed that the brain regions of dynamic facial expressions included superior frontal gyrus (SFG), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), precentral gyrus (PG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), middle occipital gyrus (MOG), inferior occipital gyrus (IOG), fusiform gyrus (FG), superior temporal gyrus (STG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), cerebellum, amygdala, lentiform nucleus (LN) and insula. Dynamic bodily expressions caused activation of the middle occipital gyrus, inferior occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, cuneus, lingual gyrus (LING), cerebellum, and parahippocampal gyrus. The activation of emotional voices was concentrated in the middle frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, precentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, heschl’s gyrus (HG), insula, amygdala and caudate nucleus (CN). Conjunction analysis suggested that the left middle temporal gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus were activated by three emotion carrier across the modalities. The results of the contrast analysis proved that the visual stimuli was more advantaged than the auditory stimuli, especially the dynamic facial expressions, the dynamic bodily expressions also played an important role. However, the emotional voices had their own uniqueness. In sum, these findings validate, support, and extend the existing neural models of the three emotion carriers, revealing a central, universal region of the emotional processing, but with each emotion carrier relying on its own reliable specific neural circuits. This study provides consistent results across studies for researchers of emotional problems, and representative reference coordinate points for future region of interest (ROI) analysis, which is conducive to propose and test hypotheses of future researches, and also is conducive to the identification and neural regulation of patients with emotional disorders. Future researches should further validate and extend these findings to explore the neural mechanisms of emotional processing at different ages and their similarities and differences. In addition, it is necessary to study the brain mechanism of each emotion type and the similarity and difference of neural activity of each emotion in different carriers in the case of sufficient data. Examining the connection of different brain regions, and the different functions of a brain region also is necessary. Meanwhile, it is essential to focus on the neural basis of dynamic bodily expressions.

Garbage In, Garbage Out? Evaluating the Evidentiary Value of Published Meta-analyses Using Z-Curve Analysis

The purpose of the current work was to examine the evidentiary value of the studies that have been included in published meta-analyses as a way of investigating the evidentiary value of the meta-analyses themselves. The studies included in 25 meta-analyses published in the last 10 years in Psychological Bulletin that investigated experimental mean differences were z-curved. Z-curve is a meta-analytic technique that allows one to estimate the predicted replicability, average power, publication bias, and false discovery rate of a population of studies. The results of the z-curves estimated a substantial file drawer in three-quarters of the meta-analyses; and in one-third of the meta-analyses, up to half of the studies are not expected to replicate and up to one-fifth of the studies included could be false positives. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed, and caution in interpreting published meta-analyses is recommended.

The effect of burnout and its dimensions on turnover intention among nurses: A meta-analytic review.

The objective of this study is elaborating on the relationship between burnout and turnover intention. Burnout and its dimensions have a significant effect on turnover intention. Meta-analysis technique is used. Forty-four studies were brought together to form four data sets. These data sets were heterogeneous, and they did not include publication bias. The effect sizes of burnout, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and professional efficacy on turnover intention among nurses were computed. Random-effects model was used. The groups including two or more studies were added into moderator analysis. The effect size of the relationship between professional efficacy and turnover intention was small, and the effect size of the other surveyed reationships was medium among both nurses and other health employees. The moderator analysis results suggested that the effect size of the relationship between professional efficacy and turnover intention among nurses is significantly different from the other health employees. Being a nurse was determined as a significant moderator for the relationship between professional inefficacy and turnover intention, and it weakened this relationship. The findings of this study can be used by health managers as burnout and turnover intention are important to determine organizational policies.

Effect Size of Blended Learning Model in Improving Students' Science Competence

This study aims to measure the effect size of experimental research that focuses on the application of the blended learning model in science learning and measures students' scientific competence. The method in this study used a meta-analysis technique with a quantitative approach. We found 11 articles that matched the criteria with a range of 2015-2021 publication years from SINTA accredited national journals and reputable international journals. The data tabulation sheet was used as a research instrument containing criteria in the form of experimental and control groups by containing information on the number of samples, average, standard deviation, education level, country, type of control, and students' science skills. The data were analyzed using the openMEE application and it obtained a summary effect size of 0.861 so that it can be interpreted as being in the high category and it is assumed that blended learning is effective in improving students' science skills in the form of conceptual understanding, science process skills, critical thinking, and others. Blended learning can be recommended as learning that has the potential to be implemented in the current digital era and can be a reference for further researchers to develop blended learning models in science learning.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Acceptance in the Global Context: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Large-scale vaccination is the only hope to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies show that many people are hesitant to get vaccinated and the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy varies between countries and non-dominant groups. Our study aims to shed light on the latest trends in vaccine hesitancy and acceptance across countries and identify the predictors driving these trends in the global context. We used meta-analytic techniques to analyse the trends in vaccine hesitancy and acceptance, and a systematic review approach to analyse their predictors in the global context. We found that, across all studies, the acceptance and hesitancy rates for taking the vaccine are 64% and 21% respectively. The acceptance rate among healthcare workers was found to be higher than the general adult population (70% vs 61%). Female gender, concerns on side effects and perceiving the vaccine unsafe were the most reported predictors of hesitancy. Older age, higher educational level, flu vaccine history, and low perceived risks were found to predict COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Many nations face huge challenges to get their significant proportion of populations immune to COVID-19. It is important to disseminate accurate information through trusted channels, and policymakers should address predictors of hesitancy when designing vaccination policies.

MicroRNAs associated with chronic kidney disease in the general population and high-risk subgroups: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

IntroductionChronic kidney disease (CKD) is a significant health and economic burden, owing to its ever-increasing global prevalence. Due to the limitations in the current diagnostic methods, CKD is frequently diagnosed...

Network Meta-Analysis for Single-Case Design Studies: An Illustration.

Single-case designs (SCDs) are used to evaluate the effects of interventions on individual participants. By repeatedly measuring participants under different conditions, SCD studies focus on individual effects rather than on group summaries. The main limitation of SCDs remains its generalisability to wider populations, reducing the relevance of their findings for practice and policy making. With this limitation in mind, methodological developments for synthesising SCD data from different studies that investigate the same research question have intensified in the past decades (e.g. multilevel modelling). However, these techniques are restricted to comparing two interventions at a time and can only incorporate evidence from studies that directly compare the two treatments of interest. These limitations could be addressed by using network meta-analysis that incorporates both direct and indirect evidence to simultaneously compare multiple interventions. Despite its potential, network meta-analytical techniques have yet to be applied to SCD data. Thus, in this paper, we argue that network meta-analysis can be a valuable tool to synthesise SCD data. We demonstrate the use of network meta-analysis in SCD data using a real dataset, and we conclude by reflecting on the challenges that SCD researchers might face when applying network meta-analysis methods to their data.

Parental Involvement and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis

This study examined the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement through the meta-analysis technique. A total of 40 studies from 18 journal articles that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were analyzed to find the correlation between variables. The result showed the correlation between parental involvement with academic achievement with r=0.251. The result could be concluded that there was a significant correlation between parent involvement and academic achievement. The estimated correlation value of this study is consistent with the previous meta-analysis studies on a similar topic.

Unearned Endowment and Charity Recipient Lead to Higher Donations: A Meta-Analysis of the Dictator Game Lab Experiments

As fundamental conditions and subject attributes in lab and field are very different, insights from existing meta-analyses performed on combined data from lab and field might imprecisely summarize the behavior in lab. Therefore, we focus on lab experiments to examine the influence of ‘earned versus unearned’ and ‘student versus charity recipient’ experimental protocols on donations using meta-analysis based on 80 dictator game studies spread over the time frame of 23 years (1997 – 2020). We also take advantage of more recent meta-analysis techniques to improve the robustness and offer methodological advancements for the examination of human behavior. We find that dictators on average share approximately 22% of their endowment. We also find robust evidence that earned endowment reduces benevolence when the recipient is a charity, while the use of charity instead of student as the recipient enhances benevolence with unearned endowment. These findings extend our understanding regarding the conditional effects of nature of endowment and recipient type on the behavior in lab.

Midodrine for the prevention of vasovagal syncope: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Vasovagal syncope (VVS) is a common clinical condition that lacks effective medical therapies despite being associated with significant morbidity. Current guidelines suggest that midodrine, a prodrug for an α1-adrenergic receptor agonist, might suppress VVS but supporting studies have utilized heterogeneous methods and yielded inconsistent results. To evaluate the efficacy of midodrine to prevent syncope in patients with recurrent VVS by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies. Relevant randomized controlled trials were identified from the MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL, and CINAHL databases without language restriction from inception to June 2021. All studies were conducted in clinical syncope populations and compared the benefit of midodrine vs. placebo or non-pharmacological standard care. Weighted relative risks (RRs) were estimated using random effects meta-analysis techniques. Seven studies (n = 315) met inclusion criteria. Patients were 33 ± 17 years of age and 31% male. Midodrine was found to substantially reduce the likelihood of positive head-up-tilt (HUT) test outcomes [RR = 0.37 (0.23-0.59), P < 0.001]. In contrast, the pooled results of single- and double-blind clinical trials (I2 = 54%) suggested a more modest benefit from midodrine for the prevention of clinical syncope [RR = 0.51 (0.33-0.79), P = 0.003]. The two rigorous double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials included 179 VVS patients with minimal between-study heterogeneity (I2 = 0%) and reported a risk reduction with midodrine [RR = 0.71 (0.53-0.95), P = 0.02]. Midodrine is effective in preventing syncope induced by HUT testing and less, but still significant, RR reduction in randomized, double-blinded clinical trials.

The Association Between Early Antenatal Care and Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria in Pregnancy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Effect Modification by Planned Pregnancy Status.

Background:Evidence of the association between early antenatal care (ANC) and receiving at least three doses of sulphadoxine–pyrimethamine (IPTp3+) during pregnancy is limited. It’s also unclear whether the association between early ANC and IPTp3+ is modified by planned pregnancy status.Objectives:Our primary aim was to assess the relationship between early ANC and IPTp3+ and to assess whether this relationship is modified by a woman’s planned pregnancy status. We also estimated IPTp3+ coverage across Sub-Saharan African countries.Methods:Data on 77 183 mothers with a live birth in the past two years were analyzed using multiple indicator cluster surveys (MICSs) from 17 Sub-Saharan African countries conducted between 2013 and 2019. We used modified Poisson regression with a robust variance to assess the association between early ANC and IPTp3+, while adjusting for country, clustering, stratification and sample weights. Effect modification by planned pregnancy status was assessed on the additive and multiplicative scales. We used meta-analytic techniques to pool prevalent estimates of IPTp3+ across all countries.Findings:IPTp3+ overall coverage was 22.1% (95% CI: 17.0%, 27.1%), and ranged from 2.9% (95% CI: 1.3%, 4.4%) in São Tomé and Príncipe to 51.7% (95% CI: 49.2%, 54.1%) in Ghana. IPTp3+ coverage was 30% higher among mothers who had early ANC compared to those who did not have early ANC [adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR): 1.30, 95% CI: 1.23,1.36]. There was evidence of effect modification on the additive [relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI): 0.08, 95% CI: 0.0002, 0.15] and multiplicative (aPR: 1.10, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.20) scales.Conclusions:IPTp3+ coverage was low across many of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women who had early ANC were more likely to receive IPTp3+. Women whose pregnancies were unplanned were less likely to receive IPTp3+, but our effect modification analysis showed that early ANC among such women can increase IPTp3+ coverage.

META ANALISIS PENGARUH MODEL PEMBELAJARAN PROBLEM BASED LEARNING TERHADAP KEMAMPUAN BERPIKIR KRITIS

This study aims to analyze previously published studies so as to obtain a summary of the effect of the Problem Based Learning (PBL) learning model on students' critical thinking abilities in learning biology. This research is an experimental research with a meta-analysis technique. This meta-analysis technique is carried out in several steps, namely (1) determining the research topic, (2) determining the period of the article to be used, (3) searching for scientific articles that will support the research, (4) reading, determining, and analyzing the article to be used, (5) analyze, process, and conclude the data obtained. The research method used in this research is a survey of scientific research articles and other scientific publications. The effect of studies that have applied the problem-based learning model is analyzed using meta-analysis techniques. The findings of this study reveal that the problem-based learning model has an effect on students' critical thinking skills in learning biology. This can be seen from the results of a meta-analysis study with an average effect size of 0.52 on the moderate criteria.

A Simple Prediction Score for Diagnosis of Acute Pancreatitis.

The diagnostic accuracy (DA) for patients with acute pancreatitis (AcPa) has been rarely evaluated. In the AcPa study group, there were 22 patients versus 1,311 patients in the non-AcPa group. The clinical history-taking variables (CHT) (n=22), clinical signs & tests details (CST) (n=14), and laboratory analyses (n=3) were recorded in each patient. Meta-analytical techniques were used to detect the summary sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) estimates for each data set; CHT, CST, and diagnostic scores (DS). In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, the area under curve (AUC) values for i) CHT, ii) CST, and iii) DS were as follows: i) AUC=0.640 (95%CI=0.550-0.730); ii) AUC=0.588 (95%CI=0.520-0.656), and iii) AUC=0.943 (95%CI=0.910-0.976). The differences between these AUC values (roccomp analysis) are as follows: i) versus ii) p=0.155; i) versus iii) p<0.0001; ii) versus iii) p<0.0001. The new DS introduced in this study proved to be far superior to both symptoms and signs & tests in its DA for AcPa, as demonstrated by HSROC analysis.

Potential Determinants of Manual Lifting: Validation of Ergonomic Assessment by Scoping Review Applying Meta-analysis Approach

Introduction: Despite automation, manual load lifting is unavoidable in occupations like Industry, healthcare, defence, etc. Ergonomics studies on manual lifting conducted across the globe explored few aspects of biomechanical and physiological responses. It was hypothesised that, ‘holistic ergonomics approach’ involving simultaneous recording of these responses under single study, would elucidate potential injury causing factors more effectively and results could be validated by applying meta-analysis technique of literature review. Aim: To identify the potential determinants of manual lifting by applying multivariate statistics to existing data and correlate the results with determinants as per literature review applying meta-Analysis. Materials and Methods: Clustering and principal component analysis tools of factor analysis was applied on the data obtained under the pilot study (n=11) undertaken by same authors previously on manual lifting that assessed 26 dependent parameters simultaneously for load magnitudes (10 kg, 20 kg), lifting heights (floor-knuckle, knuckle-shoulder and floorshoulder) and lifting frequencies (1lift.min-1, 4lifts.min-1). Further, extensive scoping literature review on determinants of manual load lifting was done applying text mining tool of meta-analysis technique on R software platform using 921 pubmed abstracts published between 1991 and 2018. Results: Salient findings of factor analysis corroborated with that of scoping literature review. Accordingly, dependent variable ‘Vertical Ground Reaction Force (VGRF)’ and independent variable ‘vertical height of lift’ changed most significantly during manual lifting, showing significant positive correlations. Newton’s third law of motion states that while bipedal standing/walking/running on floor, two forces (with three vector components) are acting upon a person: the force of gravity (downward force, equivalent to body weight) and the Ground Reaction Force (GRF, an equal upward force exerted by floor). However, while standing still at one place for lifting load, only the largest vector component of GRF, i.e., VGRF acts on the body (=‘body weight’+‘load magnitude’) through the vertical height of lift. Conclusion: It may be concluded that ‘vertical height of lift’ and VGRF are possible indicators of injury potential of manual lifting. However, studies on larger sample size and meta-analysis of relevant full papers instead of abstracts need to be done in future.

Natural disasters and economic growth: a synthesis of empirical evidence

Natural disasters pose a serious threat globally and, in the future, their frequency and severity are expected to increase due to climate change. Empirical evidence has reported conflicting results in terms of the impact of disasters on economic growth. In this context, the present work seeks to synthesize the recent empirical evidence related to this topic. More than 650 estimates, from studies published in the last five years (2015-2020), are used. Meta-analysis and meta-regression techniques are employed. The review includes three sources (Scopus, Science Direct, and Google Scholar). The results identified the existence of a negative and significant combined effect (-0.015). Developing countries are especially vulnerable to disasters. The negative impact is greater for disasters that occurred in the last decade -in relation to previous disasters-. These findings constitute a call for attention in favor of mitigation and adaptation policies.

POSB309 Assessing the Validity of Median Time-to-Event Meta-Analysis Using Weighted Median and Median of Medians Approaches: A Simulation Study

Time-to-event outcomes, such as time-on-treatment or time-to-treatment discontinuation, are often incorporated into pharmacoeconomic evaluations using medians. Median time-to-event can be challenging to summarize across multiple trials, as standard techniques for meta-analysis require stringent distributional assumptions. Recently, methods were proposed for conducting meta-analysis of medians. Therefore, we conducted a simulation study to evaluate whether these novel techniques are suitable for estimating pooled median time-to-event.