Inferential approaches based on the synthesis of diverse sources of evidence are increasingly employed in epidemiology as a means of exploiting all available information, perhaps from studies of differing designs. The application of the synthesis of evidence to real world problems generally...

We consider the general problem of simultaneously monitoring multiple series of counts, applied in this case to methicillin resistant "Staphylococcus aureus" (MRSA) reports in 173 UK National Health Service acute trusts. Both within-trust changes from baseline ('local monitors') and overall...

Meta-analysis in the presence of unexplained heterogeneity is frequently undertaken by using a random-effects model, in which the effects underlying different studies are assumed to be drawn from a normal distribution. Here we discuss the justification and interpretation of such models, by...

Policy decisions often require synthesis of evidence from multiple sources, and the source studies typically vary in rigour and in relevance to the target question. We present simple methods of allowing for differences in rigour (or lack of internal bias) and relevance (or lack of external bias)...

A wide variety of statistical methods have been proposed for detecting unusual performance in cross-sectional data on health care providers. We attempt to create a unified framework for comparing these methods, focusing on a clear distinction between estimation and hypothesis testing approaches,...