Variation in baseline risk as an explanation of heterogeneity in meta‐analysis

A relationship of baseline risk to treatment effect size has been suggested as a possible explanation of between-study heterogeneity in meta-analyses. To address this question, we develop regression models to examine the relationship between the logits (or other response measure) in the intervention and control groups. A weighted least squares (WLS) approach is described that allows for the heterogeneous sampling variation in the two groups, …