What Is Meta-Analysis Good For?

Karen Kovaka (University of Pennsylvania, Virginia Tech)

The Method, Theory, and Reality Speaker Series has a talk this upcoming Thursday, April 17th from 6:00pm - 8:00pm EST:

Karen Kovaka (UC San Diego), "What Is Meta-Analysis Good For?"

Abstract: There is an ongoing debate about the quality of the evidence that meta-analysis provides. But both critics and defenders of meta-analysis generally assume that the core purpose and contribution of meta-analysis is to tell us what the evidence really says about the existence and magnitude of causal relationships, to extract conclusions that agree from datasets that do not. I argue that while delivering such information about cause-and-effect relationships is the most common use of meta-analysis, this is only an application of the tool, and that its primary epistemic role of meta-analysis is something else entirely: to help us explore and understand variation among populations of studies.

Zoom Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/93437787423 

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