Question

Heterogeneity abounds in nature. Comment on the impact of heterogeneity on the conduct of scientific investigation.

Answer 1

The concept of ‘heterogeneity’ is much invoked in social science research especially in disciplines like psychology, sociology and anthropology and is now an integral part of economics in sub-disciplines like industrial organization, entrepreneurship, behavioral economics, and similar fields.

Heterogeneity is not something to be afraid of, it just means that there is variability in your data.

It is important to note that there are different types of heterogeneity:

• Clinical: Differences in participants, interventions or outcomes
• Methodological: Differences in study design, risk of bias
• Statistical: Variation in intervention effects or results.

Once we have detected variability in our results we need to deal with it. Here are some method on how we can treat this issued.

• Check our data for mistakes
• Don’t do a meta-analysis if heterogeneity is too high
• Perform a random effects meta-analysis
• Changing the effect measures