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How Is Meta Analysis Used?

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How is meta-analysis used? Give an example? Patten (2014) defines meta-analysis as “a set of statistical methods for combining the results of previous studies” and the conclusions are based on “mathematical synthesis” (p. 151). Cohn and Becker (2003) offer a reason why meta-analysis is done “conducting a meta-analysis is the increase in statistical power that it affords a reviewer” (p. 243). There are two goals for meta-analysis research. They include to estimate a population effect-size parameter and to increase the precision of the estimate of the effect size parameter (Cohn & Becker, 2003). There are two types of meta-analyses. They include fixed effect model and random effects model (Borenstein, Hedges, & Rothstein, 2007). Fixed effects models deals with only one true effect size in which all of the studies that are used whereas random effects refers to when the true effect varies between each individual study that is pulled (2007). An example of a meta-analysis research was done by Ttofi and Farrington (2011). The authors did a systematic review measuring weighted mean effects and correlations between study features and effect sizes in the evaluation of how effective anti-bullying programs were. The methods that the authors used included randomization, a comparison of intervention-control with pretest-posttest of bullying, other intervention-controlled caparison, and age-cohort design (2011). The criteria for a study to be included in the review are as followed:
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