metaSEM: an R package for meta-analysis using structural equation modeling

Abstract

The metaSEM package provides functions to conduct univariate, multivariate, and three-level meta-analyses using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach via the OpenMx package in the R statistical platform. It also implements the two-stage SEM approach to conducting fixed- and random-effects meta-analytic SEM on correlation or covariance matrices. This paper briefly outlines the theories and their implementations. It provides a summary on how meta-analyses can be formulated as structural equation models. The paper closes with a conclusion on several relevant topics to this SEM-based meta-analysis. Several examples are used to illustrate the procedures in the supplementary material.