ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the various stages through which a meta-analysis is conducted. The necessary equations to conduct a meta-analysis are given in Appendix XIV, where a worked example of each stage is given. The example is based on a meta-analysis of chronic pelvic pain (McGowan, Clark-Carter, & Pitts, 1998). Many of the procedures I describe are the same as would be employed for a systematic review that was not a meta-analysis; a metaanalysis is only appropriate when there are sufficient similarities among studies that combining their information quantitatively makes sense. Thus, a researcher could be intending to conduct a meta-analysis but find that this is not appropriate; at that point the decision would be made to write the report as a systematic review. This would mean that the review had still benefited from the rigour which a meta-analysis demands and is more open to scrutiny than a more impressionistic narrative review.
