ABSTRACT
Forest plots are commonly used to visualize the results of a meta-analysis. Forest plots contain a graphical representation of each study's effect size and confidence interval, and also show the calculated overall effect. Furthermore, they include the effect size data that was used for pooling.
This chapter explains how to generate a forest plot using R, and different ways to optimize their appearance.
The chapter also introduces so-called drapery plots, which can be used in addition to forest plots. Drapery plots are well suited to display how the results of a meta-analysis change for varying significance thresholds, while forest plots can only be produced assuming a fixed significance level.
