We thank Levis et al. for their interest in our study and for sharing their perspective
on preparing IPD for analysis. We wish to emphasize that our paper's purpose was to
provide guidance on the different steps that should be undertaken when preparing IPD
for analysis, but not to be prescriptive about how each step should be performed.
The examples provided in the manuscript are examples of how we applied PRIME (Preparation,
Replication, Imputation, Merging, Evaluation) to our Network Meta-Analysis and are
in no way comprehensive [
[1]
,
[2]
. The suggestions provided by Levis et al. in their commentary emphasize the importance
of having a structured process for managing IPD. We agree that the finer details of
that structured process may vary since they should be determined by the nature of
the datasets and share Levis et al.’s desire to see our framework refined in order
to develop a robust scientific process to answer the research questions with validity.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 15, 2021
Accepted:
May 4,
2021
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
