A Re-Evaluation of Fixed Effect(s) Meta-Analysis

Summary Meta-analysis is a common tool for synthesizing results of multiple studies. Among methods for performing meta-analysis, the approach known as ‘fixed effects’ or ‘inverse variance weighting’ is popular and widely used. A common interpretation of this method is that it assumes that the underlying effects in contributing studies are identical, and for this reason it is sometimes dismissed by practitioners. However, other interpretations of...