Dear Experts

I performed two separate and independent meta-analyses, and they included different datasets. I now would like to find the different effects between them in Linear Model and I want to add two covariates in this process.

I click “Linear Model” and choose intercept line with MDD (categorical variable), P_age (continuous variable) and H_age (continuous variable),and I want to set P_age and H_age as covariates. Thus, in the same time, I set the right column corresponds to 1, 0, and 0. I did not use the “filter” option. However, the results are not clear to me. To gain a better understanding, I also set the right column to 1, 1, and 1. Surprisingly, the results were very similar to the previous ones.Thus, I am confused about the meaning of the values in the right column.

Totally, my questions are as follows: 1) How should I set covariates when use “Linear Model” and what is the meaning of reported results? 2) Can you explain the meaning of the numbers in the right column?

Thank you for your assistance!

Best,

Jinglei Xu  

Dear Jinglei Xu,

To combine results from two independent meta-analyses, you should do the multimodal meta-analysis, showing the overlap and differences. Another way is to do one meta-analysis with both datasets and then run a linear regression to see the differences.

Best,

Lydia

Dear Lydia,

Thank you very much for your advice and guidance. I will consider the two methods you suggested and choose the one that best suits my research question. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Jinglei Xu