Meta-Analysis: Techniques for the Quantitive Integration of Research Findings

This chapter discusses an approach that can provide the researcher with tools to integrate a body of literature and describes a set of facets that can be used to partition aBody of literature about some focal problem and which may provide theearcher with insights concerning that problem.

Abstract

With the rapid growth of empirical findings in consumer behavior, there is a need to integrate research results into a coherent body of knowledge. In this chapter, we discuss an approach that can provide the researcher with tools to integrate a body of literature. The chapter is divided into three sections. In section one, we present a brief historical overview of the procedures used to integrate research findings. In section two, we describe a set of facets that can be used to partition a body of literature about some focal problem and which may provide the researcher with insights concerning that problem. In section three, we discuss the types of statistical procedures that can be used for the integration of research findings, and we present examples of the use of these procedures.