Topic summary
Meta-analytic
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Meta-analysis.
History
The term "meta-analysis" was coined in 1976 by the statistician Gene V. Glass, who, in an article in Educational Researcher that year, stated: "meta-analysis refers to the analysis of analyses". Glass's work aimed at describing aggregated measures of relationships and effects. While Glass is credited with authoring the first modern meta-analysis, a 1904 paper by the statistician Karl Pearson published in the British Medical Journal collated data from several studies of typhoid inoculation; it is seen as the first time a meta-analytic approach was used to aggregate the outcomes of multiple clinical studies. Numerous other examples of early meta-analyses can be found, including in occupational aptitude testing and agriculture.