INTRODUCTION TO META-ANALYSIS USING R

COURSE PREREQUISITE - Installation of Rstudio and meta/metafor packages

As the practical sessions will be using R, you should have installed on your laptops (1) the latest version of Rstudio for either Mac or Windows, and (2) the meta and metafor packages for R. You can install these as described below:

1. Rstudio is just a front-end interface for R, so both Rstudio and R needed to be downloaded and installed (If you already have either of these installed it is still a good idea to update to the latest version to guarantee that the code used in the practical sessions will run). You can download and install both Rstudio and R by following the instructions here: https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop. Installation is generally straightforward, but if you run into any difficulties, you may find the following useful: https://rstudio-education.github.io/hopr/starting.html

2. Once Rstudio has been installed, just type the following two commands into the open (console) window, press enter after each command (alternatively you can select click Tools > Install Packages from the menu at the top, and enter the package names meta and metafor). The two packages will then automatically download from the internet and self-install.

install.packages("meta")

install.packages("metafor")

Basic R tutorial

Although you do not need any prior experience of R for this course, you may find it helpful to do a basic R tutorial so you can feel comfortable navigating your way around the software (which you will need If you plan to use R in the future). There are infinite resources for learning out there, but probably the most useful is the datacamp course below:

https://www.datacamp.com/courses/free-introduction-to-r