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The overall goal of this paper was to acquaint the reader with the procedures
and assumptions involved with a Hunter and Schmidt meta-analysis. Meta-Analysis
provides a strong alternative to the more traditional review methods, and
allow for quantitative conclusions to be reached.
Over the last 15 to 20
years there has been an increased criticism of
social
sciences research because of the confusing state of the research literature.
While one reviewer could find a set of studies which supported his viewpoint,
a second reviewer commonly found several which did not support said
conclusions. A common conclusion in
reviews was "Conflicting Results In The Literature, More Research Is Needed
To Resolve This Issue." Which typically resulted in more studies which did
nothing to clarify the issue.
Meta-analysis offers a way out of this quagmire.
By using
carefully constructed and comprehensive coding and accumulation procedures
questions which
cannot be easily answered with a single study and be resolved using
meta-analysis. There are two examples within this site, one a reprint
from Lyons
& Woods,
(1991), and the other an as yet unpublished meta-analysis by Lyons (2003).
Other efforts by the author include a quantitative review of the effectiveness
of behavioral approaches in encouraging recycling. Other approaches include
integrating quantitative review methods with such theory building/confirmatory
methods as causal modelling and path analysis.
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