The meta-analysis of single proportions has become a popular application over the last two decades. Especially, systematic reviews of prevalence studies are conducted in various fields of science, including medicine, ecology, psychology, or social sciences. In this chapter, we illustrate meta-analysis methods to pool single proportions and to compare proportions from two groups. We introduce classic approaches based on the inverse variance method as well as generalized linear mixed models taking the binary structure of the data into account. The most common transformations of proportions and their back-transformations are described both for individual studies and in the meta-analysis setting.
Keywords: Back-transformation; Generalized linear mixed model; Meta-analysis; Prevalence.
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