What is meta-analysis?
Meta-analysis is a statistical technique for cross-referencing data from different scientific research on a topic .
In other words, it is a way of carrying out a systematic review of the bibliography of the work.
Then, it is possible to synthesize, combine and summarize conclusions from other researches, to form the bibliographic review of your work .
Why do and use meta-analysis in academic work?
Meta-analysis guarantees the reliability and technical quality of the reviews. This is because it requires grouping and standardizing the data. Only then can the analysis be carried out.
This technique began to emerge as an important part of research in the 1970s. Since then, it has become a common way of synthesizing evidence and summarizing the results of individual studies.
So, to reach valid conclusions, one should not start from a single research. Several different studies should be combined.
It is in this context that meta-analysis emerges as a relevant factor to combine these different studies.
5 steps to doing a meta-analysis
It is possible to develop the meta-analysis of your work from 5 steps:
1. Identify the research problem
You already know that all searches start from a search problem, right?
Well then. to carry out the meta-analysis, one must keep in mind the question that the work wants to answer. What are the objectives of the work.
Only then is it possible to combine all the data.
2. Do the bibliographic research
That’s the second step. You should look for bibliographies on the topic of your work. That is: the conclusion of other works on your research topic.
At this point, it is important to search for articles in reliable databases, such as Google Scholar and Scielo .
3. Define selection and inclusion criteria
After that, you must create inclusion and exclusion criteria for the searches. This means that you will only include jobs that match your criteria.
Furthermore, only works that have direct relevance to answer the research question will be included.
It is important to write a review prism. That is, a checklist and a flowchart comprising the items that outline the writing of a systematic review, when it is ready.
The purpose of the prism is to help improve the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Furthermore, the prism can also be useful for critical evaluation of systematic reviews. But it should not serve as a tool for evaluating the quality of a review.
Nowadays, most journals request that the checklist be attached when submitting to a systematic review.
4. Data Extraction
Furthermore, you must draw conclusions from articles and works of relevance to the research.
This is the information that will be combined later.
5. Perform the basic meta-analysis
Finally, you can count on different types of software to make the final combination of the data.