Graph options in metan

[Ray Hsu]

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to Stata and I'm hoping someone might be able to help me. I'm doing meta-analysis using -metan- and have a couple of questions regarding how I can refine the forest plots.

1. How do I change the font size for specific section. For example, I want to increase the font size for the label headings defining each column eg. Study ID, OR (95% CI), Events, Treatment, % Weight etc. I also want to increase the font size for the names of each subgroup in the Study ID column to differentiate them from the study names (not shown in the attached graph).

2. How do I reduce the gaps between lines of texts and between the x-axis/label headings and the actual graph area. Some of my forest plots only have a small number of studies, and the forest plot generated by -metan- is showing huge gaps everywhere.

Any help would be highly appreciated. Many thanks.

Ray

[Marcos Almeida]

Hello Ray,

Welcome to the Stata Forum!

To start, and following the FAQ, I just wish to underline that - metan - is a SSC user-written adofile in Stata. Concerning the graphical display, we need to begin by checking the help files. Among interesting possibilities for your case, I'd mention the options:

xlabel(#, ...) - According to the text from the help files "the user may define anything if the force option is used.
boxsca(#) - You may increase or decrease the percentage. The default is 100.
textsize(#) - You may also increase or decrease, The default is 100
astext(# ) - The percentage of text inside the graph. The default is 50.

Finally, I share with you this information, taken from the above-mentioned source:

graph_options are any of the options documented in [G] twoway_options. These allow the addition of titles, subtitles, captions, etc.; control of margins, plot regions, graph size, and aspect ratio; and the use of schemes.

Hopefully that helps!

Best,

Marcos