Synthesis of Findings

Abstract

Much of the research conducted in education, psychology, business, and other disciplines has involved single experiments or studies that rarely provide definitive answers to research questions. We have learned that researchers seldom replicate their research studies and instead use cross-validation, jackknife, or bootstrap methods to estimate the stability and accuracy of a sample statistic as an estimate of a population parameter. The world around us is understood better when we discover underlying patterns, trends, and principles, which can result from an accumulation of knowledge gained from several studies on a topic of interest. Consequently, a review of the research literature is invaluable in summarizing and understanding the current state of knowledge about a topic. Rather than rely on subjective judgments or interpretations of the research literature, meta-analysis techniques provide a quantitative objective assessment of the study results.