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rreliabilitymetafor

How to generate forest plot for Cronbach's Alpha & ICC (metafor)?


I'm trying to create a forest plot in metafor for pooled reliability estimates (Cronbach's Alpha and ICC) for a systematic review we've done. I want to do the same as the authors have in the image I've pasted (which comes from here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1071100718816953). i.e.: we'd like to recreate these sorts of analyses using our data. I can't find a tutorial or example code for this despite exhausting the search engine here and google, nor can I figure out from the help which doesn't seem to touch on this (https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/metafor/versions/1.9-9/topics/escalc or https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/metafor/metafor.pdf). I've emailed the corresponding author who suggested we read: https://www.um.es/metaanalysis/pdf/5049.pdf, but this hasn't helped (nothing about R or the steps involved in creating the analyses/plots in there).

Can anyone point me in the direction of some help for the steps required to do this?

Here's the image:

Figure displaying Forest plot of pooled reliability measures

Edit: clarified we were trying to do our own analysis, not recreate someone else's, & added the corresponding author's reply


Solution

  • Here is an example for Cronbach's alpha, using the transformation by Bonett (2002) before analyzing the alpha values (not sure what the authors used).

    library(metafor)
    dat <- dat.bonett2010
    res <- rma(measure="ABT", ai=ai, mi=mi, ni=ni, data=dat)
    forest(res, slab=dat$source, header=TRUE, atransf=transf.iabt, refline=coef(res))
    

    forest plot

    Adjust as needed. See help(forest.rma) (or here) for details on what can be adjusted.