A random effects variance shift model for detecting and accommodating outliers in meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Meta-analysis typically involves combining the estimates from independent studies in order to estimate a parameter of interest across a population of studies. However, outliers often occur even under the random effects model. The presence of such outliers could substantially alter the conclusions in a meta-analysis. This paper proposes a methodology for identifying and, if desired, downweighting studies that do not appear representative of the population they are thought to represent under the random effects model. METHODS: An outlier is taken as an observation (study result) with an inflated random effect variance. We used the likelihood ratio test statistic as an objective measure for determining whether observations have inflated variance and are therefore considered outliers. A parametric bootstrap procedure was used to obtain the sampling distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistics and to account for multiple testing. Our methods were applied to three illustrative and contrasting meta-analytic data sets. RESULTS: For the three meta-analytic data sets our methods gave robust inferences when the identified outliers were downweighted. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed methodology provides a means to identify and, if desired, downweight outliers in meta-analysis. It does not eliminate them from the analysis however and we consider the proposed approach preferable to simply removing any or all apparently outlying results. We do not however propose that our methods in any way replace or diminish the standard random effects methodology that has proved so useful, rather they are helpful when used in conjunction with the random effects model

The dinosaur and banding of the main pulmonary trunk in the heart with functionally one ventricle and transposition of the great arteries: A saga of evolution and caution

Constitution for the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management as amended by the Board of Trustees on January 24, 1997. The constitution is in English and contains eighteen articles and one annex containing the Board mission statement

Privatisasi Badan USAha Milik Negara

BUMN merupakan pelaku ekonomi yang sangat vital perannya dalam Pembangunan Nasional. Peran BUMN yang sangat vital tersebut ternyata tidak diikuti dengan kinerja BUMN yang membaik justru sebaliknya, kinerja BUMN malah mengecewakan. Salah satu cara yang dapat ditempuh guna mengembangkan BUMN agar menjadi Perusahaan yang kinerjanya baik, efisien, profesional dan transparan adalah melalui mekanisme privatisasi. Privatisasi BUMN merupakan salah satu bagian dari upaya pembenahan guna mendayagunakan dan mengembangkan BUMN sehingga BUMN dapat memberikan kontribusi yang maksimal kepada negara. Dalam pelaksanaan privatisasi hendaknya semua pihak yang terkait mampu untuk bekerja sama dan saling mendukung sehingga pelaksanaan program privatisasi dapat berjalan dengan efektif

Belarus in: nations in transition 2016

July 2015 marked the 25th anniversary of Belarus’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. After a brief period of democratic transition in the early 1990s, the country gradually developed into a consolidated authoritarian regime under President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. In October 2015, Lukashenka secured a fifth term in an election that observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) did not recognize as free and fair. However, unlike the December 2010 presidential election, the 2015 voting was not followed by violence or imprisonment of major opposition figures. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine had an important psychological impact on Belarusian authorities. The government is increasingly concerned by Russian actions in Ukraine and is trying to distance itself from its eastern neighbor. Belarus is also suffering from the effects of Russia’s economic downturn. In an attempt to improve relations with the West and offset the influence of an increasingly assertive Russia, the Belarusian administration released all political prisoners in August 2015

Prévalence des attitudes et comportements inadaptés face à l’alimentation chez des adolescentes de la région de Montréal

La présente étude fait partie d'un projet de recherche portant sur les habitudes alimentaires des adolescentes et les facteurs de vulnérabilité aux troubles alimentaires. Nous présentons ici les résultats ayant trait à la pré valence des préoccupations et des troubles liés à T alimentation dans un groupe, nonre présentatif, de 1162 adolescentes de la région de Montréal. Les items de deux échelles souvent employées dans le domaine révèlent que le tiers des filles sont insatisfaites de leur corps et que 14% d'entre elles adoptent des attitudes et comportements inadaptés face à l'alimentation. À l'aide de différents critères, on estime la prévalence de l'anorexie nerveuse à environ 0,6% et celle de la boulimie nerveuse entre 0,5 et 2,5 %. Ces résultats se comparent à ceux rappor tés dans d'autres centres urbains occidentaux et font ressortir l'urgence de sensibiliser la population et les milieux de la santé québécois aux troubles alimentaires.The following study is part of a research project on the eating habits of adolescent girls and on the vulnerability factors concerning eating disorders. Here the authors focus on the prevalence of various concerns and problems linked to eating habits within a non-representative group of 1,162 adolescents in the Montréal region. Two parameters frequently used in the field reveal that a third of the girls are unhappy with their body and that 14 % of the sampling adopts unhealty attitudes and behaviours in regard to eating habits. Based on several criteria, the prevalence of nervous anorexia is estimated at approximately 0.6 % and that of nervous boulimia at between 0.5 and 2.5 %. These results are comparable to those obtained in other major urban centres of the Western world. In addition, they point to the urgent need to increase awareness among the population and the Québec healthcare field on the subject of eating disorders

Varieties of Limited Access Orders: The nexus between politics and economics in hybrid regimes

This article advances our understanding of differences in hybrid stability by going beyond existing regime typologies that separate the study of political institutions from the study of economic institutions. It combines the work of Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast (NWW) on varieties of social orders with the literature on political and economic regime typologies and dynamics to understand hybrid regimes as Limited Access Orders (LAOs) that differ in the way dominant elites limit access to political and economic resources. Based on a measurement of political and economic access applied to seven post‐Soviet states, the article identifies four types of LAOs. Challenging NWW's claim, it shows that hybrid regimes can combine different degrees of political and economic access to sustain stability. Our typology allows to form theoretical expectations about the kinds of political and/or economic changes that will move different types of LAOs toward more openness or closure

Forced Labour: Definition, Indicators and Measurement

Summarizes and discusses some methods that have been used for measurement, and provides some guidance for future work on the subject. The paper was first distributed in April 2003, as a background document for an eminent group of international experts and ILO officials who participated in a consultation meeting on the measurement of forced labor

Informality, Inequality and ICT in Transition economies

In this paper, we examine the role of the quality of institutional infrastructure and information and communication technology (ICT) in the relationship between the size of the informal sector (IS) and income inequality. Following our results, the sign of the relationship between IS and income inequality depends on the quality of institutions. When institutions are weak, agents invest less human capital and ICT in the formal sector (FS), thereby reducing income inequality. Utilizing panel data for sixteen transition countries we show that the relationship between the size of the IS and the level of income inequality is ambiguous. Our findings highlight the problem of measuring the relative size of the IS which is a hidden entity. We control for robustness of our findings using alternative proxies of ICT, human capital, and institutional quality and some interaction terms among these variables