You can simply start the graph editor and change the textbox properties by double-clicking on the corresponding study. As an alternative, you can also add superscript by changing the label of the corresponding study identifier using "replace" and update the meta settings ("meta update"). The study identifier of the Forest plot ("meta forestplot") should then also adopt the changed label.

If you don't fancy editing each graph by hand, you can save your graph command as a do-file and add tags like this

title(“{it:E coli} (log{subscript:10}) concentrations" "in bottle water")

The {it:} tag puts the enclosed text in italics, and the {subscript:} one, as you guessed, makes it a subscript. You want the {superscript:} tag. The latter commands can be abbreviated to {sup:} and {sub:} respectively.

I avoid the graph editor because I like to leave code that allows me to reproduce all the graphs just in case the data get changed in some way and I have to re-graph everything. And, of course, you can reuse the code in other analyses!

Have a look at

. help graph text

Ronán Michael Conroy, thanks for providing the syntax. However, this syntax is applicable for the title or caption of a figure. I am looking for Stata syntax that works inside the forest plot. Although Alexander Pabst provided what I wanted, it was without coding (manual editing). Could you please provide Stata code (syntax) on how to add superscripts (as references in each study)?

You could post-edit your graph with syntax and loop over your study identificator (variable 'author' in my example) to automatically add a superscript number to the studies in the forest plot :

meta set est se, studylab(author)

meta forestplot

levelsof author, local(auth)

local i = 1

foreach a of local auth {

gr_edit plotregion1.column1.items[`i'].text = {}

gr_edit plotregion1.column1.items[`i'].text.Arrpush "`a' {sup:`i'}"

local ++i

}

You need to replace 'est', 'se' and 'author' according to your data. And perhaps you have to sort the data by 'author' first to get the study names sorted alphabetically.