Offering pragmatic guidance for planning and conducting a meta-analytic review, this book is written in an engaging, nontechnical style that makes it ideal for graduate course use or self-study. The author shows how to identify questions that can be answered using meta-analysis, retrieve both published and unpublished studies, create a coding manual, use traditional and unique effect size indices, and write a meta-analytic review. An ongoing example illustrates meta-analytic techniques. In addition to the fundamentals, the book discusses more advanced topics, such as artifact correction, random- and mixed-effects models, structural equation representations, and multivariate procedures. User-friendly features include annotated equations; discussions of alternative approaches; and "Practical Matters" sections that give advice on topics not often discussed in other books, such as linking meta-analytic results with theory and the utility of meta-analysis software programs. ÿ

"This book offers readers the best of both worlds: technical sophistication coupled with user-friendly, practical information for doing meta-analysis." -- Page 4 of cover.

The Fifth Edition of Harris Cooper′s bestselling text offers practical advice on how to conduct a synthesis of research in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. The book is written in plain language with four running examples drawn from psychology, education, and health science. With ample coverage of literature searching and the technical aspects of meta-analysis, this one-of-a-kind book applies the basic principles of sound data gathering to the task of producing a comprehensive assessment of existing research.

Praised in the first edition for the clarity of his general framework for conceptualizing meta-analysis, Rosenthal's revised edition covers the latest techniques in the field, such as a new effect size indicator for one size data, a new coefficient of robustness of replication, new procedures for combining and comparing effect sizes for multiple dependent variables, and new data on the magnitude of the problem of incomplete retrieval (the file drawer problem).

Providing researchers with a practical and accessible advice, the Fourth Edition of the lauded Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis offers thoroughly updated information. Author Harris M. Cooper draws on more than 30 years of experience to show readers how to conduct a comprehensive synthesis of past research.

A major shift in research methodology from technical to more contextual and pragmatic approaches, this thorough resource incorporates new trends while also providing comprehensive coverage of the full range of established research approaches and techniques, skillfully combining epistemology, methodology, statistics, and application in a volume that is both sophisticated and practical. Placing a greater emphasis on interdisciplinary and applied research skills, this guide encourages the concurrent use of qualitative and quantitative methods and explores such complex topics as ethical issues in social science research; inferential statistical methods; and Marxist, feminist, and black scholarship perspectives.

Covering the most important developments in meta-analysis from 1990 to 2004, this text presents new patterns in research findings as well as updated information on existing topics.