Confronta i metodi

	Meta-regression	Meta-analisi di rete	Minimi Quadrati Pesati (WLS)
Campo	Meta-analisi	Sintesi delle evidenze	Statistica
Famiglia	Regression model	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Anno di origine	2002	2002	1935
Ideatore	Simon Thompson & Julian Higgins	Lumley (2002)	Alexander Craig Aitken
Tipo	Weighted regression for effect-size heterogeneity	Method	Weighted linear estimator
Fonte seminale	Thompson, S. G., & Higgins, J. P. T. (2002). How should meta-regression analyses be undertaken and interpreted? Statistics in Medicine, 21(11), 1559–1573.	Lumley, T. (2002). Network meta-analysis for indirect treatment comparisons. Statistics in Medicine, 21(16), 2313–2324.	Aitken, A. C. (1935). IV.—On least squares and linear combination of observations. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 55, 42–48.
Alias	Meta-Analytic Regression, Weighted Regression in Meta-Analysis, Moderator Analysis, Meta-regresyon	Mixed Treatment Comparison, MTC, Indirect Comparison Meta-Analysis	WLS, weighted regression, heteroscedasticity-corrected OLS, variance-weighted least squares
Correlati	2	1	3
Sintesi	Meta-regression is a statistical technique that extends conventional meta-analysis by regressing study-level effect sizes on one or more study characteristics (moderators) to explain between-study heterogeneity. Formalized by Thompson and Higgins in 2002, it uses weighted least squares — weighting each study by the inverse of its variance — within a mixed-effects framework, allowing researchers to identify which study features systematically account for variation in observed effects across the literature.	Network meta-analysis (NMA) is a systematic method for comparing multiple interventions simultaneously within a single analytical framework, incorporating both direct evidence (head-to-head trials) and indirect evidence (comparisons via common comparators). First formalized by Lumley in 2002, NMA allows researchers to rank treatments and quantify comparative effectiveness even when some treatment pairs have never been directly studied.	Weighted Least Squares is a generalization of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression that assigns each observation a weight inversely proportional to its error variance, thereby down-weighting high-variance data points and up-weighting precise ones. Introduced in its general matrix form by Alexander Craig Aitken in 1935, WLS is the canonical remedy when heteroscedasticity is present and the error variance structure is known or can be reliably estimated.