Comparison of statistical inferences from the DerSimonian–Laird and alternative random‐effects model meta‐analyses – an empirical assessment of 920 Cochrane primary outcome meta‐analyses

In random-effects model meta-analysis, the conventional DerSimonian-Laird (DL) estimator typically underestimates the between-trial variance. Alternative variance estimators have been proposed to address this bias. This study aims to empirically compare statistical inferences from random-effects model meta-analyses on the basis of the DL estimator and four alternative estimators, as well as distributional assumptions (normal distribution and …