Random effects meta‐analysis: Coverage performance of 95% confidence and prediction intervals following REML estimation

A random effects meta‐analysis combines the results of several independent studies to summarise the evidence about a particular measure of interest, such as a treatment effect. The approach allows for unexplained between‐study heterogeneity in the true treatment effect by incorporating random study effects about the overall mean. The variance of the mean effect estimate is conventionally calculated by assuming that the between study variance is...