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Practical Meta-Analysis, by Mark W Lipsey and David B. Wilson (2001). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
The voluminous growth in the number of research studies in any topic over the years has necessitated the need for efficient methods of data synthesis and integration. Meta-analytic methods have been refined over the past two decades to address this important need. Although the technical literature is dense with derivations of formulas and mathematical nuances, the basic principles of meta-analysis are straightforward: Given an observed distribution of effect sizes for a particular relationship across several studies, we estimate the mean and variability of the effect sizes and assess whether the variability is substantial or due to artifacts such as sampling error. Social scientists and policy makers are certain to encounter meta-analyses in their fields during their career. A book that describes the steps involved in a meta-analysis in an easy-to-understand format (not just as a cookbook recipe) will be a useful addition to the literature. Practical Meta-Analysis by Mark W. Lipsey and David B. Wilson aptly fills this niche.
The book is divided into eight chapters and five appendices. The first chapter provides an introduction to meta-analyses and where it is applicable. This chapter also introduces the concept of an effect size and very briefly discusses the strengths and weaknesses of meta-analyses. The second chapter focuses on issues in explicitly identifying the relationship to be meta-analyzed. Also discussed is how to conduct a literature search and useful tips in locating and retrieving research reports. The third chapter introduces the different types of effect sizes. The authors categorize the effect sizes as those useful for central tendency descriptions (one-variable case), two-variable relationships, and multivariate relationships....