In statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

, the Newcastle–Ottawa scale is a method for assessing the quality of nonrandomised studies in meta-analyses

Meta-analysis

In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...

. The scales allocate stars, maximum of nine, for quality of selection, comparability, exposure and outcome of study participants. The method was developed as a collaboration between the Universities of Newcastle, Australia and Ottawa, Canada.