Table 1.

Parameter values used in the simulation study.

Parameter	Values
Randomised trial
Analytical method	SAFV, SACS and ANCOVA
Correlation between baseline and follow‐up measurement of outcome (ρ)	0, 0.05, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 0.95
Follow‐up intervention group variance ( ${\sigma }_{Y_{int}}^2$)	12 and 1.32
Intervention effect (θ)	0, 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8
Random effect (u i) allowing for between‐trial heterogeneity	u i ~ N(0, τ 2) where τ 2 = 0, 0.32, 0.62, 0.92
Change in the mean between baseline and follow‐up in each group (α)	0.1
Randomised trial size	N(20, 9)
Meta‐analyses
Number of trials per meta‐analysis	U(3, 8)
Combination of analytical methods used to analyse trials within a meta‐analysis	all SAFV, all SACS, all ANCOVA and random selection

SAFV, simple analysis of final values; ANCOVA, analysis of covariance; SACS, simple analysis of change scores.