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Meta-analytic approaches for examining complexity and heterogeneity in studies of adolescent development.

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION:In the field of adolescent development, meta-analysis offers valuable tools for synthesizing and assessing cumulative research evidence on the effectiveness of programs, practices, and policies intended to promote healthy adolescent development. When examining the impact of a program implemented across multiple primary studies, variation is often observed in the methodological attributes of those primary studies, such as their implementation methods, program components, participant characteristics, outcome measurement, and the systems in which programs are deployed. Differences in methodological attributes of primary studies represented in a meta-analysis, referred to as complexity, can yield variation in true effects across primary studies, which is described as heterogeneity. METHODS:We discuss heterogeneity as a parameter of interest in meta-analysis, introducing and demonstrating both graphical and statistical methods for evaluating the magnitude and impact of heterogeneity. We discuss approaches for presenting characteristics of heterogeneity in meta-analytic findings, and methods for identifying and statistically controlling for aspects of methodological complexity that may contribute to variation in effects across primary studies. RESULTS:Topics and methods related to assessing and explaining heterogeneity were contextualized in the field of adolescent development using a sample of primary studies from a large meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of brief alcohol interventions for youth. We highlighted approaches currently underutilized in the field and provided R code for key methods to broaden their use. CONCLUSIONS:By discussing various heterogeneity statistics, visualizations, and explanatory methods, this article provides the applied developmental researcher a foundational understanding of complexity and heterogeneity in meta-analysis.

SUBMITTER: Parr NJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6934259 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Meta-analytic approaches for examining complexity and heterogeneity in studies of adolescent development.

Parr Nicholas J NJ Schweer-Collins Maria L ML Darlington Todd M TM Tanner-Smith Emily E EE

Journal of adolescence 20191115

<h4>Introduction</h4>In the field of adolescent development, meta-analysis offers valuable tools for synthesizing and assessing cumulative research evidence on the effectiveness of programs, practices, and policies intended to promote healthy adolescent development. When examining the impact of a program implemented across multiple primary studies, variation is often observed in the methodological attributes of those primary studies, such as their implementation methods, program components, part ...[more]

PMID: 31739275

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Project description:SignificanceConcerns about the reproducibility of experimental findings have recently emerged in many disciplines, from psychology to medicine and neuroscience. As NIRS is a relatively recent brain imaging technique, the question of reproducibility has not yet been systematically addressed.AimThe current study seeks to test the replicability of effects observed in NIRS experiments assessing young infants' rule-learning ability.ApproachWe conducted meta-analyses and mixed-effects modeling-based inferential statistics to determine whether effect sizes were replicable and comparable in a sample of 23 NIRS studies investigating infants' abilities to process repetition- and diversity-based regularities in linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory and visual sequences. Additionally, we tested whether effect sizes were modulated by different factors such as the age of participants or the laboratory. We obtained NIRS data from 12 published and 11 unpublished studies. The 23 studies involved a total of 487 infants, aged between 0 and 9 months, tested in four different countries (Canada, France, Italy, and USA).ResultsOur most important finding is that study and laboratory were never significant moderators of variation in effect sizes, indicating that results replicated reliably across the different studies and labs included in the sample. We observed small-to-moderate effect sizes, similar to effect sizes found with other neuroimaging and behavioral techniques in the developmental literature. In line with existing findings, effect sizes were modulated by the participants' age and differed across the different regularities tested, with repetition-based regularities giving rise to the strongest effects; in particular, the overall magnitude of this effect in the left temporal region was 0.27 when analyzing the entire dataset.ConclusionsMeta-analysis is a useful tool for assessing replicability and cross-study variability. Here, we have shown that infant NIRS studies in the language domain replicate robustly across various NIRS machines, testing sites, and developmental populations.

Dataset Information

Meta-analytic approaches for examining complexity and heterogeneity in studies of adolescent development.

Publications

Meta-analytic approaches for examining complexity and heterogeneity in studies of adolescent development.

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