Origin from 1976
The statistical pooling of results across independent studies of the same question into one weighted estimate, named by Gene Glass in 1976. Distinguishes a claim about religious practice supported by the pooled evidence from one resting on a single unreplicated study.
Facts
Method
Methodstatistical pooling of effect sizes across multiple independent studies of the same question, weighted by each study's sample size and design quality 2 Subject
Subjecthow strong and how consistent the evidence for a claim actually is across every independent study that has tested it, rather than any single study alone 2 Identity
Field Category Parent Field Origins
Emerged As Named Discipline Learn More
Gene Glass Combines Everyone's Small Studies Into One Answer
Meta-analysis statistically combines the results of multiple independent studies that tested the same question, pooling their effect sizes, weighted by sample size and methodological quality, into a single estimate that is more precise and more resistant to any one study's flaws than any individual study on its own. The educational psychologist Gene V. Glass coined the term in 1976, developing the method to settle a contested question in psychotherapy research where dozens of small individual studies had produced inconsistent results that no single study could resolve, and showing that combining them statistically could reveal a consistent overall effect the individual studies had each been too small to detect clearly.
Claims about religious practice, that meditation measurably reduces stress, that prayer affects health outcomes, that a given ritual produces a documented psychological benefit, are typically tested across many small independent studies rather than one large one, and those studies frequently disagree. Meta-analytic methodology is how the atlas distinguishes a claim genuinely supported by the pooled weight of the evidence from one resting on a single favorable study that later, larger or better designed studies failed to replicate.
Scholarly Disciplines of Meta-Analytic Methodology
Cross-Tradition Connections
Branch Of
Open Questions Needing This
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.