"Meta-analysis (quantitative overview) is a systematic review that employs statistical methods to combine and summarize the results of several trials. Well-conducted meta-analyses are the best method of summarizing all available unbiased evidence on the relative effects of treatment" (Brooten, 2017).
Meta-analyses and systematic reviews are often conducted together with the meta-analysis being the statistical testing carried out over the articles selected for the systematic review.
As with any type of study, you can narrow your search down to just meta-analyses by adding it as a search term to your search string. See example below:
"pain management" AND "meta-analysis"
There are also things that you can do in specific databases that can help you limit to these articles as shown below.
CINAHL and Medline are databases that allow you to limit your search results to meta-analyses only.
To find meta-analyses in CINAHL or Medline, follow the steps below:
To find a Meta-Analysis in PubMed, follow the steps below:
Note! With any of these searches, you will need to limit to full text to get articles immediately available to you.
Brooten, D. (2017). Clinical trials. In J. Fitzpatrick (Ed.), Encyclopedia of nursing research (4th ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
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