Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39512571›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in psychology2024

Meta-analysis: a tool for constructing theories or evaluating interventions or simply proving everyday assumptions?

Erich H Witte, Ivo Ponocny

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Erich H WittePsychological Institute, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Ivo PonocnyFaculty of Psychology, Sigmund Freud University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

After a brief consideration of the development of meta-analyses as a joint discussion of results from a research area across development stages 0, 1, 2, it is concluded that the present form 2.0 is unsuitable to serve as a basis for theory building. Further development of this tool into a meta-analysis 3.0 is necessary for this purpose which requires the validity of the independent variables in the primary studies, the reduction of the error variance of the dependent variables, a stability of the effects over the primary studies and a quantitative comparison between observed and predicted effects in the primary studies. In the current meta-analyses 2.0, a concrete single-case approach creates the impression that mainly everyday ideas are investigated, which one would like to generalize to a population of other conditions. Furthermore, the results of the existing meta-analyses are either homogeneous and very small or heterogeneous. Meta-analysis 2.0 searches for the instability of the measurements under a specific topic with methods of induction. The procedure of a meta-analysis 3.0 is described in general and carried out hypothetically and with an empirical example. It searches for the stability of quantitative reconstructions of data over different topics with the method of abduction. The conclusion can be summarized as that meta-analysis 3.0 is indispensable as a tool for theorizing, and theorizing presupposes meta-analysis 3.0. The link between this interdependence is abduction in contrast to induction as a research strategy.

Indexed as

abductionerror theorymeta-analysisreliabilitytheory testingvalidity

Identifiers

PMID39512571
PMCPMC11540666

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.