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Comprehensive Meta-Analysis: Locating Studies and Literature Review Techniques

This overview provides key insights into effective strategies for locating studies for meta-analysis. It underscores that a meta-analysis must adequately summarize existing literature without necessarily being comprehensive. The text outlines various research techniques, including database searches, ancestry and descendancy approaches, hand searching, and leveraging the "invisible college" of researchers. It highlights the importance of clear inclusion/exclusion criteria, maintaining meticulous records of search methods, and practical steps for organizing article data using Excel for optimal analysis.

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Comprehensive Meta-Analysis: Locating Studies and Literature Review Techniques

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Presentation Transcript

  1. (2) Locating Studies

  2. Overview • General Information to keep in mind: • A meta-analysis is only informative if it adequately summarizes the existing literature • HOWEVER, it does not have to be comprehensive (fail-safe n) but needs to be close to comprehensive • Techniques - database searches, ancestry approach, descendancy approach, hand searching, invisible college

  3. Available approaches (from Johnson & Eagly, 2000) (1) Database searches • Which databases? • Depends on topic • Obviously PsycINFO • Ask Librarian if other databases are relevant • Which search terms? • For studies in hand, see “Descriptors” • For studies in hand, see “Identifiers” • Use wildcards: juror*

  4. Available approaches (from Johnson & Eagly, 2000) (2) Ancestry approach • Search reference list of articles in hand • What to do about referenced unpublished? • What to do about referenced poster/talk? • What to do about foreign language?

  5. Available approaches (from Johnson & Eagly, 2000) (3) Descendancy approach • Use “cited by” feature in PsycINFO? • What about SSCI? • What if there are differences between the two?

  6. Available approaches (from Johnson & Eagly, 2000) (4) Hand searching • Scan individual journals • Provides a good cross-check • May find “hidden” articles • May find new Descriptors / Identifiers • Don’t spend too much time on this

  7. Available approaches (from Johnson & Eagly, 2000) (5) Invisible college • Using the network of researchers • Email listservs • When in the process should you send the email? • The best time to send the email is: (1) after you have finished your first pass through finding ES for each study because then you will have a clear idea of what you need and how to craft the email letter appropriately, (2) but before you have your coders start coding, otherwise you will have to re-do the coding for the new studies.

  8. Overarching Principles (1) Inclusion/Exclusion criteria • Locating Studies (Step 2) goes hand-in-hand with Identifying Hypothesis (Step 1) • This is partly an a-priori determination of what to investigate • This is partly an on-going dynamic process where you review the literature and decide what to investigate • This is partly an ad-hoc statement or summary of what you investigated

  9. Overarching Principles (2) Explicit and open to scrutiny • Must detail in “Method” how you found sources so must cover all your bases, otherwise reviewers may argue about your methods • So read “Method” sections of other meta-analyses for information and copy best ones • Keep a record of what search terms you used, what databases you used, etc. See page 19-20 of my Quals for example

  10. Overarching Principles (3) Comprehensive? • “Garbage in – Garbage out” • If cast too wide a net and need to trim down, then try setting conceptual boundaries such type of IV, type of DV, domain, paradigm, etc. • Ideally comprehensive but doesn’t have to be comprehensive (fail-safe n) but needs to be close to comprehensive

  11. Overarching Principles (4) Inaccessible? • For articles listed as “unpublished” or “in press”, contact the authors • For articles in a foreign language, if there is no English translation, then report in Method section which articles were inaccessible due to language issues

  12. Concrete Steps: • Create an excel file (See website “Example-DataSet1”) • Why this helps: • Have listing of each article you have found • Sort them into those with relevant data and those without (see bottom of excel file) • For those with relevant data, can start inserting effect sizes (Step 3) and moderators (Step 5) • For those without relevant data, can type in “notes” about why it is not relevant (you will need this information later to report in “Method” section your exclusion/inclusion criteria) • Since listing of each article you found, when come across a new article, can see if you already found it • Within excel file type in article reference (APA format) so can copy/paste whole thing into your papers “Reference” section

  13. Concrete steps (cont.) • Things to keep in mind • In example excel file, Step 2 is only columns A, B, C (other columns are Steps 3, 4, 5) • In your excel file, you may create as many columns as you need the example excel file is a cleaned-up version of one I used but the actual one has a lot of information unique to the particular meta. See next slide for my actual excel file by double-clicking

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