Overview of Meta-Analysis | Books on Meta-Analysis | Other Meta-Analysis Sites | Publication Bias


The Handbook of Research Synthesis
Harris Cooper and Larry Hedges (eds.)

This book is a classic.  Recognized as the definitive resource for research synthesis when published in 1994, it remains the first book many people turn to, even today. The book is arranged as an encyclopedia, with each chapter written by experts in a specific aspect of research synthesis.  However, the editors also arranged for the chapter authors to use the same datasets and style throughout, so the book flows naturally from one section to the next, and offers an excellent overview of the field for statisticians and researchers alike.

Statistical Methods for Meta-Analysis
Larry V Hedges and Ingram Olkin

Like “The Handbook”, this book, published in 1985, helped to open the field of meta-analysis to a generation of researchers, became an instant classic, and remains a valuable resource to this day.  Where "The Handbook" covers many aspects of research synthesis, this volume focuses almost exclusively on meta-analysis (the statistical component of research synthesis), and does so from a mathematical perspective.

Practical Meta-Analysis
Mark Lipsey and David Wilson

The book’s approach is captured in its title.  The book offers a practical, hands-on approach and as such is probably the best general purpose introduction to meta-analysis.  It offers an overview of all aspects of research synthesis, and a non-technical introduction to the statistical aspects of meta-analysis.  This book can serve as a text for short courses in meta-analysis.

Systematic Reviews in Health Care:  Meta-Analysis in context
Matthias Egger, George Davey-Smith, Douglas G Altman, Foreword by Iain Chalmers

This edited volume does for systematic review in medicine what "The Handbook of Research Synthesis" does for research synthesis (primarily) in the social sciences.  It provides an overview of the field and then explores specific issues in detail.  These include statistical issues, but also such issues as standards of evidence, the use of observational studies in meta-analysis, practical implications of heterogeneity, and so on.  While this volume is geared primarily toward researchers in the medical fields, the issues raised are relevant also to the social sciences and other fields. 

Methods for Meta-Analysis in Medical Research
Alex J Sutton, Keith R. Abrams, David R Jones, Trevor A Sheldon, Fujian Song

Like “Systematic Reviews in Health Care”, this book draws examples primarily from medicine and epidemiology, but the focus here is more on statistical issues and less on the broader framework of systematic reviews. There is surprisingly little overlap between the two books.  Many of the topics covered in either book are not covered in the other and when the two books do address the same issue, each tends to provide a somewhat different perspective.  The style is clear and relatively non-technical, and the examples are used effectively.  As was true of “Systematic Reviews”, the issues covered in this book are relevant also in fields other than medicine, and anyone engaged in meta-analysis or research synthesis will find this to be a valuable resource as well as an excellent read.

Meta-Analysis in Medicine and Health Policy
Dalene K Stangl, Donald Berry (eds)

This book is more technically oriented than the others on this page.  Chapters include advanced issues in meta-analysis such as Bayesian approaches.  This book would serve as an important resource for persons working with those approaches, but these chapters assume a relatively high level of statistical knowledge.


Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis
Hannah Rothstein, Alex Sutton, Michael Borenstein

Meta-Analysis provides a mathematically accurate synthesis of the available data, but cannot guarantee that the available data is unbiased.  In fact, it has been shown that researchers are more likely to publish studies that yield relatively large treatment effects than studies which yield more modest effects, which raises the concern that any synthesis of published data can yield an exaggerated effect.  This book traces the history of the problem, explains how to assess the potential impact of bias in any given meta-analysis, and discusses mechanisms that are being adopted in hopes of minimizing the potential for bias in the future. 

How Science Takes Stock:  The Story of Meta-Analysis
Morton Hunt

This book discusses the history of meta-analysis over the past several decades – how it emerged as a field, what role it has played in medicine and social science, and so on.  Mr. Hunt is a journalist, and this book reads like an extended article in the Science section of the New York Times – interesting, very well written, and informative.  The book provides a glimpse at some of the people responsible for the development of this field, some of controversies that have developed around it (“Apples and Oranges”, “Garbage in, Garbage out", and how meta-analysis is likely to affect the practice of research and policy in the future.

Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings
John E. Hunter and Frank L. Schmidt

This book focuses on the Hunter-Schmidt approach to meta-analysis, and as such it differs from the other books on this page in three ways.  It focuses primarily on validity coefficients and standardized mean differences, to the exclusion of other effects size indices.  It focuses on artifact corrections, that is, adjusting the point estimates to account for imperfect reliability and range restriction.  It weights the studies by sample size, rather than inverse variance.  This approach is generally the preferred approach among persons working in Industrial/Organizational psychology, and for these people this book would be the primary resource.  For others, this book offers a look at an alternate approach to meta-analysis.

Synthesizing Research (Third edition): A Guide for Literature Reviews
Harris Cooper

This book focuses on that part of the research synthesis that is not the meta-analysis:  How to formulate the research question, locate the relevant studies, code the data, interpret and present the analysis.  This book puts the meta-analysis endeavor in context, and is an invaluable (and very readable) resource, both for researchers and as a text in courses on meta-analysis.

Meta-Analysis of Controlled Trials
Anne Whitehead

Where the Egger and the Sutton books attempt to look at the big picture of meta-analysis as part of a systematic review, this volume focuses primarily on the mathematics of the meta-analysis itself, starting with simple examples and moving on to advanced issues.  In that sense this volume is similar to Hedges and Olkin’s book on statistical methods, but the Whitehead volume has a more limited focus.