Meta-analysis aims to combine effect measures from several studies. For continuous outcomes, the most popular effect measures use simple or standardized differences in sample means. However, a number of applications focus on the absolute values of these effect measures (i.e., unsigned magnitude effects). We provide statistical methods for meta-analysis of magnitude effects based on standardized mean differences. We propose a suitable statistical model for random-effects meta-analysis of absolute standardized mean differences (ASMD), investigate a number of statistical methods for point and interval estimation, and provide practical recommendations for choosing among them.

翻译：[摘要] 元分析旨在合并多项研究中的效应量。针对连续型结局指标，最常用的效应量基于样本均值的简单差值与标准化差值。然而，许多应用场景关注的是这些效应量指标的绝对值（即无符号量级效应）。本文提出了基于标准化均值差异进行量级效应元分析的统计方法。我们构建了适用于绝对标准化均值差异随机效应元分析的统计模型，系统评估了多种点估计与区间估计的统计方法，并给出了不同方法选择的实用建议。