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: Jan 2026

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

Data processing: we merged 20 individual datasets in Metapsy with 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). Signed z-values were computed as effect sizes divided by their standard errors.

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 |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.

Metapsy: psychotherapy mixture model plot

References

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