Personal and workplace psychosocial risk factors for carpal tunnel syndrome: a pooled study cohort: author response

The analysis we presented in the August 2013 issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 1 was performed by pooling raw data from 3515 workers from more than 50 workplaces collected by six research teams. This was not a meta-analysis but rather an analysis of data at the level of the individual participants. Meta-analyses are typically performed because the raw data are not available. Pooling of data at an individual subject level results in a more heterogeneous population with greater generalisability, increased variation in …