Workshop on Meta-analysis April 28-29 April 2025

Workshop: Meta-analysis  

 

Cochrane Sweden is pleased to announce that registration is now open for a two day workshop on conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. The workshop will take place on 28-29 of April 2024, on campus in Lund, Sweden. 

 

We have invited a statistician with special interest in meta-analysis (Chris Rose), and the developer/product owner of RevMan Web (Rebecka Hall), to guide the participants through the steps in planning, performing, and interpreting meta-analyses. The workshop will cover theory and practice. For the practical application and exercises with forest plots, we will use the software RevMan Web (the updated browser-based version of RevMan 5). The workshop will be conducted in English. 

 

Content (including lectures, discussions and practical sessions): 

  • Introduction to systematic reviewing and meta-analysis 
  • Introduction to treatment effects 
  • Overview of data extraction, transformation, and imputation 
  • Introduction to meta-analysis
  • Using RevMan Web to perform and report meta-analyses
  • Introduction to heterogeneity, and using and interpreting results from random-effects meta-analysis
  • Exploring heterogeneity using subgroup meta-analysis and meta-regression
  • Using the calculator in RevMan Web to extract and analyze study data not reported as simple treatment effect estimates, and automatic calculations.   

 

Lecturers/facilitators:  

  • Chris Rose is a statistician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Folkehelseinstituttet; FHI). He has a PhD in statistical modelling (University of Manchester) and is an accredited Chartered Statistician with the UK’s Royal Statistical Society. His meta-analysis work supports decision-making in the Norwegian healthcare and welfare services. He also works on the design and analysis of randomized trials of public health and social measures for epidemic control, educational interventions to improve health choices, and digital interventions for maternal and child health. He has contributed to several Cochrane systematic reviews, either as a coauthor or statistical editor.
  • Rebecka Hall is the product owner of RevMan, Cochrane’s core tool for structuring and storing study data, generating meta-analyses and generating articles for the Cochrane Library. After studying medical engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm she embarked on the journey to understand and support the world of systematic reviews. She has contributed to two Cochrane systematic reviews as a coauthor. After 5 years of focusing on the Cochrane universe, RevMan Web is now available for external users and Rebecka continues to work hard with a motivated team to inform better decisions in healthcare worldwide.

 

Participants:  

  • The workshop is aimed at people wanting to learn more about the basic theory and practice of meta-analysis for evidence synthesis. This includes researchers, PhD students, systematic reviewers and guideline developers. 

The workshop is aimed at participants who meet most of the following requirements:  

  • An understanding that treatment effects can be studied using randomized or observational studies, and some basic understanding of how this is done.
  • An understanding of the different types of outcomes that can be measured by such studies (e.g., events that do or do not occur, such as deaths; values that can be measured on a continuum, such as body mass index).
  • A basic understanding of statistical concepts such as averages (means), standard deviations, risks (probabilities), standard errors, confidence intervals, and P-values.
  • An ability to read a research paper reporting a randomized trial and identify the key results.
  • A basic understanding of what a systematic review is, and of some of the key concepts such as PICO, risk of bias, and GRADE.
  • Ability to use web-based applications (e.g., Office 365, Google Docs).
  • Access to a WiFi/cellular-enabled computing device (e.g., Windows/Mac/ChromeOS laptop, tablet).

Dates and location:  

  • 28-29 of April 2025. The workshop will start at 09.00 on April 28th and end at 16.00 the latest on April 29th. 
  • Segerfalksalen, Biomedical Center (BMC), Lund University, Lund, Sweden. 
  • We will give final decisions about enrollment before the end of January, but likely earlier for participants signing up early on. 

Fee:  

  • The fee for the workshop will be 3.000 SEK (the fee for participants outside of Sweden will, in addition, include VAT). 
  • We will send payment instructions to participants admitted to the workshop.  

Registration and organisation: 

  • Register for this workshop via this link.  
  • A final schedule will be sent to accepted participants before the workshop.  
  • We will send payment instructions to participants admitted to the workshop.
  • If the workshop is booked up very fast, we will have to limit the number of participants from the same institution in order to reach as many organizations and institutions as possible. If necessary, we will contact people from the same institution after the application deadline to find a solution.  
  • Accomodation and lunch for day 1 and 2 is not included in the fee. 
  • The venue for the workshop is within walking distance of the central city in Lund and the train station (15 minutes). 

Workshop resources: 

  • RevMan Web. You can open up a 30-day practice review for free when you have registered and logged in with a Cochrane Account, and a subscription to the platform is available for longer term use. https://revman.cochrane.org  
  • Cochrane Handbook, chapters about meta-analysis. You can download it for free from here. https://training.cochrane.org/handbook  

Preparations:  

  • Before the course, you will need to do some limited preparations. They will be sent out when you are accepted to the workshop.
  • If you have any questions related to the workshop, you can contact us by email at martin.ringsten@med.lu.se