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Confidence interval for a subgroup difference in average Spearman correlations

Source: R/meta_comp.R
meta.sub.spear.Rd

Computes the estimate, standard error, and confidence interval for a difference in average Spearman correlations for two mutually exclusive subgroups of studies. Each subgroup can have one or more studies.

For more details, see Section 3.3 of Bonett (2021, Volume 5).

Usage

meta.sub.spear(alpha, n, cor, group)

Arguments

alpha

alpha level for 1-alpha confidence

n

vector of sample sizes

cor

vector of estimated Spearman correlations

group

vector of group indicators:

  • 1 for set A

  • 2 for set B

  • 0 to ignore

Value

Returns a matrix with three rows:

  • Row 1 - estimate for Set A

  • Row 2 - estimate for Set B

  • Row 3 - estimate for difference, Set A - Set B

The columns are:

  • Estimate - estimated average correlation or difference

  • SE - standard error

  • LL - lower limit of the confidence interval

  • UL - upper limit of the confidence interval

References

Bonett DG (2008). “Meta-analytic interval estimation for bivariate correlations.” Psychological Methods, 13(3), 173–181. ISSN 1939-1463, doi:10.1037/a0012868 .

Bonett DG (2021). Statistical Methods for Psychologists, Vol 1-5, https://dgbonett.sites.ucsc.edu/.

Examples

n <- c(55, 190, 65, 35)
cor <- c(.40, .65, .60, .45)
group <- c(1, 1, 2, 0)
meta.sub.spear(.05, n, cor, group)
#>                Estimate      SE      LL     UL
#> Set A:            0.525 0.06484  0.3866 0.6403
#> Set B:            0.600 0.08829  0.3992 0.7459
#> Set A - Set B:   -0.075 0.10954 -0.2761 0.1565

# Should return:
#                Estimate      SE      LL     UL
# Set A:            0.525 0.06484  0.3866 0.6403
# Set B:            0.600 0.08829  0.3992 0.7459
# Set A - Set B:   -0.075 0.10954 -0.2761 0.1565