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Galaxy Plot: A New Visualization Tool of Bivariate Meta-Analysis Studies.

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Abstract

Funnel plots have been widely used to detect small study effects in the results of univariate meta-analyses. However, there is no existing visualization tool that is the counterpart of the funnel plot in the multivariate setting. We propose a new visualization method, the galaxy plot, which can simultaneously present the effect sizes of bivariate outcomes and their standard errors in a two-dimensional space. We illustrate the use of galaxy plot by two case studies, including a meta-analysis of hypertension trials with studies from 1979 to 1991, and a meta-analysis of structured telephone support or non-invasive telemonitoring with studies from 1966 to 2015. The galaxy plot is an intuitive visualization tool that can aid in interpretation of results of multivariate meta-analysis. It preserves all of the information presented by separate funnel plots for each outcome while elucidating more complex features that may only be revealed by examining the joint distribution of the bivariate outcomes.

Acceptance Date Dec 23, 2019
Publication Date Jan 13, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal American Journal of Epidemiology
Print ISSN 0002-9262
Publisher Oxford University Press
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwz286
Keywords Galaxy, visualization, bivariate, meta-analysis
Publisher URL https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwz286/5701565

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