ABSTRACT
172STATA is a general-purpose, command-line driven, programmable statistical package in which commands to perform several meta-analytic methods are available. The major advantage with STATA is the continuous updating of the user written commands and placing them online along with complete description of the same including its utility. They are freely available on the Internet. All the commands related to meta-analysis can be searched using the command “search meta.” The editor can be accessed by issuing a dot command “edit” or by clicking data in the main menu and data editor in the sub menu. Later data can be entered or edited in any of the cell by assuming every column is one variable and every row is observation for that particular variable. The major commands like meta for point estimators, metan for ratio estimators, funnel for funnel plot, labbe for labbe plot and metacum for cumulative meta-analysis are illustrated using live examples, syntax of commands and their variations to get desired output along with proper interpretation. Similarly other commands like metap for mata-analysis of p values, metacum for cumulative pooled estimates, metareg for meta-regression, metainf for influence analysis, metabias for publication bias, galbr for Galbraith plot for heterogeneity and some more commands are used as per the syntax provided to complete the meta-analysis.
