Evidence-appraisal glossary
Consistency (Network Meta-Analysis)
Consistency is agreement between the direct evidence (from head to head trials) and the indirect evidence (routed through a common comparator) for the same pair of treatments. When the two disagree beyond chance, the network is inconsistent and its combined estimates are suspect.
Also called: coherence, direct-indirect agreement.
Transitivity is the conceptual assumption; consistency is its statistical footprint. Analysts check it by comparing what the direct trials say about A versus B against what the rest of the network implies through indirect paths. A large, unexplained gap signals that the studies are not interchangeable or that bias has entered somewhere, which undermines the treatment ranking the network produces. Methods such as node-splitting and design-by-treatment interaction models are used to test it.
Read the full Reading the Evidence blog.
This is a plain-language methodology definition for reading research. It is general education, not medical advice.