Metapsy

Tags:meta analysisdatabaseRCTHover over the tag text for details.

Domainpsychotherapy

Data1.5k studies in 20 meta-analyses

Note

To download only this data file: Metapsy.rds (89 KB)

To download all BEAR datasets, click here.

Description

Studies included in Metapsy (https://www.metapsy.org/), a set of living meta-analytic databases of randomised trials of psychotherapeutic interventions.

Snapshot date: January 2026

Data availability: Metapsy is maintained by an international collaboration led by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Databases are available at https://www.metapsy.org/ and through the R package metapsyData (Harrer et al. 2022). The Metapsy FAQ states that all data provided as part of the project are open access and that attribution is required. The source contains RCTs of psychotherapeutic interventions.

Data processing: We merged 20 individual datasets in Metapsy and performed some cleaning (e.g. to extract study dates from titles). Almost all estimates are Hedges’ g, but for one of the databases (total-response) we converted log-odds ratios to SMD (dividing by \(\Pi/\sqrt{3}\) to scale SD of logistic regression) to keep a comparable scale. Signed z-values were computed as effect sizes divided by their standard errors.

Study characteristics:

• Sample size and year: ss is the sum of n_arm1 and n_arm2 when both are supplied; year is the source year or a year parsed from the study label.

• Study ID: we use the source study label within each database.

• Meta-analysis ID: we use the Metapsy database identifier.

• Topic: we use an explicit clinical-subject lookup; datasets peer-support and total-response are labelled as “mental health”.

• Effects are standardised mean differences, mainly Hedges’ g; a minority are converted from log odds ratios.

Model of z-values

Characteristic	Estimate
Probability of significance	43%
Relative probability of publication for |z| < 1.96	0.73
Successful replication for |z| > 1.96	70%
Correct sign for |z| > 1.96	99%

What do these terms mean?

Probability of significance

The reported value is the assurance: the proportion of significant results adjusted for publication bias.

Relative probability of publication

The relative probability of observing a result below the |z| = 1.96 threshold rather than above it. Values below one indicate lower observation probability below the conventional two-sided significance threshold.

Successful replication

The probability that an exact replication has the same sign and a |z| greater than 1.96, conditional on the original result having |z| greater than 1.96.

Correct sign

The probability that the observed effect has the same direction as the true effect, conditional on an original result with |z| greater than 1.96.

References

Harrer, Mathias, Eirini Karyotaki, and Pim Cuijpers. 2022. metapsyData: Meta-Analytic Psychotherapy Databases. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=metapsyData.