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PSY2802G Assignment 5: Review of a Meta Analysis of Correlational Studies (P. Tremblay)

This assignment consists of finding a published meta-analysis of (1) correlational studies or (2) naturally occurring group mean differences (e.g., standard mean differences often referred to as Cohen’s d or Hedges g). You can select any topic of interest in psychology or any related discipline using the PsycInfo database (on the ProQuest platform) at Western Libraries here. There are over 38,000 records with the keyword “meta anal*” in PsycInfo!!

My suggestion is that you use the first part of my keyword phrase in the box below: title("meta anal*"). This will retrieve all records that have the keyword that start with “meta analy” such as meta analysis or meta analytic. It will include the records that include meta-analy with a hyphen also (over 38,000). For the second part of the keyword phrase simply add keyword for your topic of interest. The noft term refers to anywhere but full text. The title term indicates that the keyword must show up in the title of the article. You could even add a third keyword if you want to zoom in on a more specific topic. title("meta anal*") AND noft("music* perform*")

In the example above, I found 5 meta-analyses and focused on the Musicians have better memory… meta-analysis. To see if your meta-analysis study satisfies the requirements, look through the article, and see if you can find the results of the meta-analysis in correlation units, or in Cohen’s d (or Hedges g) but for naturally occurring groups (not experiment groups). In my example above, I also looked in the methods section, and specifically in the section on inclusion criteria and confirmed that the authors included only studies that compared naturally occurring groups: musicians vs. non-musicians. So my example would work for the assignment. I’m including a screen shot of the forest plot below and will discuss it in class.

In a second example below, I am using three separate keywords joined with “AND” to indicate that all keywords need to be included. I picked one of the 176 records below and the meta-analysis clearly indicated correlational studies. Note that some reviews may be described as systematic reviews with a meta-analysis included. Those are equally acceptable. 

title("meta anal*") AND noft("sleep") AND noft("stress") 176 records found 

What to include in Your Review Report

Cite the article with an introductory statement and include the reference at the end.

Purpose of the meta-analysis study. Include an introduction statement that presents the purpose. In my example, here’s a relevant section but I would need to summarize and paraphrase in my own words:

“Though individual studies have produced many useful findings, a comprehensive understanding of the importance of sleep to workplace behavior has yet to emerge. To support a better understanding of the relationship between sleep and work, we provide clear distinctions between the most widely studied sleep constructs, identify antecedents and outcomes of those constructs, compare metanalytic correlations between the sleep constructs and their correlates, and investigate moderators of these relationships, promoting knowledge about effectively assessing sleep in organizational contexts as well as practical implications of organizational sleep research (Kucharczyk et al., 2012).

Inclusion criteria. This part is usually in the method section and describes the rules for including studies in their meta-analysis. Think of the studies as participants selected for a sample, but for a meta-analysis we want more than a just a sample of studies; we want the entire population of studies that meet the inclusion criteria.

Keywords or keyword phrase. Here you can cite their exact keyword information. This is very useful information that can be used by other researchers who may want to conduct a similar meta-analysis.

Results. For my specific example, the meta-analytic pooled correlation between workload and sleep quality was -.15 based on 54 studies with a total of 30,836 participants. This result was significant at p < .01. Indicate if a forest plot was included or not. In my example, there are no forest plots because several separate analyses are done and included in tables instead.

Moderators. Were moderators included? If yes provide an example. In my study, they investigated whether the correlations (between sleep quality and workload) were moderated by the type of sleep quality measure (i.e., subjective or objective). There was no difference between the correlations for these two types of sleep quality measures.

Main implication of the results as described by the authors. What do the authors consider to be their most important findings and the implications of the results?

Future directions and your own suggestions for how you could build on this meta-analysis. Sometimes a meta-analysis could be updated with newer studies. Perhaps slightly different variables could be used, sometimes with new technology. New moderator variables could be included (e.g., different age groups, cultures).

REMEMBER to write your report in APA format and submit in Word.

ALSO include a PDF of the ARTICLE (not a link) with your submission. We will deduct 10% if article is not included.

Length should be approximately 500 words (max 750).