| Abstract: | The historical roots of meta-analysis can be traced back to 17th century. The statistical synthesis of the data from separate but similar, i.e. comparable studies, leading to a quantitative summary of the pooled results. In 20th century, Karl Pearson were the first to analyze clinical trial results using meta-analysis. He compared infection and mortality among soldiers who had volunteered for inoculation against typhoid fever with that of other soldiers who had not volunteered. From then on meta-analysis has become increasingly popular in many areas of science. In 1976, Gene Glass, coined the term "meta-analysis" to refer to "the statistical analysis of a large collection of analysis results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating the findings." Computer software has also become indispensable in meta-analysis. Many programs have been developed enable users to choose that fits their own needs. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to applied meta-analysis with R and STATA for data analysis. |
