Question about a Research Article

[gillsc]

For a course, I need to superficially understand an applied statistical approach from a research paper. The article is located at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972425/. Being a meta-analysis, my best guess is they used a weighted mean, with the inverse of the variance as the weight, for each variable they wanted to compare. The other statistics like standardized mean difference, Q, Tau², and I² are to verify the studies could be compared with some confidence. Am I correct in my understanding of how this study was conducted?
Thank you
Scott
@hlsmith

 

[hlsmith]

Yes, this is likely correct. As mentioned, inverse variance serves to weight them fairly comparably to sample size!