A systematic comparison of software dedicated to meta-analysis of causal studies

Table 4 Meta-analysis software – analytical feature comparison

	CMA	WEasyMA	MetaWin	MetAnalysis	RevMan	MIX
Computational setting options
Number of decimals
Alpha level/confidence intervals
Constant continuity correction
Treatment arm continuity correction
Variance for mean differences
Variances for standardized mean differences
Bootstrap confidence intervals
Numerical output
Individual study data	AM,CI,P,W,other	AM,CI,W,other	AM,other	AM,CI,other	AM,CI,P,W,other	AM,CI,P,W,other
Association measures – risk	RD,RR,OR	RD,RR,OR	RD,RR,OR	RD,OR	RD,RR,OR	RD,RR,OR
Association measures – means & standardized measures	MD,HG,CD,other		HG,other		MD,HG	MD,HG,CD
Association measures – other	CC,Z					CC
Fixed effect models/weighting	IV,MH,PETO	IV,MH,PETO,other	IV,MH,PETO	IV,MH,PETO	IV,MH,PETO	IV,MH,PETO
Random effects models/weighting	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL
Cumulative analyses	Several variables	Several variables	Several variables	() Only graph		Several variables
Heterogeneity	Q,I²,t²	Q	Q	Q,I²	Q,I²	Q,I²,t²,other
Small study effect/publication bias	FSN,RC,EGG,TF	EGG	FSN,RC	FSN,EGG		FSN,RC,EGG,MAC,TF
Meta-regression	Single moderator		Single moderator
Graphical output
Forest plot
- Points proportional to weights
- Annotations in rows possible
- Cumulative possible
Funnel plot (1/se, se, var, N, P)	1/se,se	1/se,se,N	var,N	N	1/se	1/se,se,N,P
Galbraith plot				(radial)
Exclusion sensitivity plot
Trim and fill plot
L'Abbe plot
Other plots			HIST,NQ			BOX,HIST,NQ,other
Graph formatting

The ' ' indicates the presence and no mark indicates the absence of a feature. The '()' means that the feature is limited or partially in development, and the ' ' means it was not working correctly at the time of our assessments. Abbreviations: AM = association measure, CI = confidence interval, P = P value, W = weight, RD = risk difference, RR = risk ratio, OR = odds ratio, md = mean difference, hg = Hedges' g, cd = Cohen's d, CC = correlation coefficient, Z = Fisher's Z, IV = inverse variance weighting, MH = Mantel-Haenszel weighting, PETO = Peto's weighting, DL = Dersimonian & Laird weighting, Q = Cochran's or Breslow & Day's Q, I²=Higgins's inconsistency statistic, t²=between study variance indicator, FSN = fail-safe number test, RC = rand correlation test, Egg = Egger's regression test, Mac = Macaskill's regression test, TF = trim and fill method, se = standard error, var = variance, N = sample size, TFP = trim and fill plot, HIST = histogram, NQ = normal quantile plot, BOX = box-and-whiskers plot.

ISSN: 1471-2288