R help - Jun 2009 - Meta-Analysis: Metaplot Labels, SE, and Summary

Hello,
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm an R and meta-analysis neophyte just when
my
colleagues and I are attempting to run R for that latter purpose. We would
like to construct a graph of the 95% confidence intervals of odds ratios
(inverse odds ratios, actually). We are using the metaplot() function in the
"rmeta" package. While we can construct a basic plot, we cannot
configure it
as desired.

One, we would like to label each stratum with the study author(s) and date,
but when we include alphabetical characters in a column in our matrix
(labels=id, where id=m1[,5] , m1 is a matrix and [,5] is the column
containing authors and dates), we obtain the following error message:
"expected 'a real' got 'Kovacs'. (Kovacs is the author of
the first study
listed in the matrix.) How can we label the plot with authors and dates if
this method of inputting data does not work?

Finally, we are unclear about the arguments "summn",
"sumse", and "sumnn".
To what should we set these arguments in order to create a summary line that
illustrates the confidence interval of the mean of all effect sizes in our
meta-analysis?

Thank you very much. I apologize for my proven inability to resolve these
issues without assistance.

Best,

Ishwar Bridgelal
University of Southern California

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

At 02:37 29/06/2009, Ishwar Bridgelal wrote:
>Hello,
>I'm ashamed to admit that I'm an R and meta-analysis neophyte just
when my
>colleagues and I are attempting to run R for that latter purpose. We would
>like to construct a graph of the 95% confidence intervals of odds ratios
>(inverse odds ratios, actually). We are using the metaplot() function in the
>"rmeta" package. While we can construct a basic plot, we cannot
configure it
>as desired.
library(rmeta)
?forestplot

>One, we would like to label each stratum with the study author(s) and date,
>but when we include alphabetical characters in a column in our matrix
>(labels=id, where id=m1[,5] , m1 is a matrix and [,5] is the column
>containing authors and dates), we obtain the following error message:
>"expected 'a real' got 'Kovacs'. (Kovacs is the author
of the first study
>listed in the matrix.) How can we label the plot with authors and dates if
>this method of inputting data does not work?
>
>Finally, we are unclear about the arguments "summn",
"sumse", and "sumnn".
>To what should we set these arguments in order to create a summary line that
>illustrates the confidence interval of the mean of all effect sizes in our
>meta-analysis?
>
>Thank you very much. I apologize for my proven inability to resolve these
>issues without assistance.
>
>Best,
>
>Ishwar Bridgelal
>University of Southern California
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Michael Dewey
med at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk/home.html