Meta-analysis: the librarian as a member of an interdisciplinary research team - Navigating Among the Disciplines: The Library and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Library Trends, Fall, 1996 by Jack T. Smith, Jr.

ABSTRACT

META-ANALYSIS is a quantitative statistical tool for combining research studies with a small study population tO achieve a larger effect in size. It combines the talents of subject experts, statisticians, meta-analytic specialists, information management professionals, and librarians, creating a multidisciplinary team. This article will explore the interdisciplinary nature of interdisciplinary research, provide a brief explanation of the Integrative Review of Research (IRR) of which meta-analysis can be a part, and describe die librarian's role or roles in the various stages of the project. Finally, a look at developing trends or issues in the area will be discussed.

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY NATURE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

Julie Thompson Klein's paper in this issue of Library Trends the stage for a discussion of the impact that interdisciplinary research has on researchers, the library and its staff, academic departments, and their parent institutions. Academic, administrators are grappling with the reality of shrinking state funds and are applying pressure on researchers to be totally self-sustaining. Researchers seeking federal support for their projects are finding dwindling funding sources which means that the competition for grant support is more competitive than ever before. One way to gain an advantage is to submit a grant proposal that crosses disciplines.

Klein describes the interdisciplinary approach evidenced in several broad disciplines. More specifically, the area of health sciences research is undergoing this same phenomenon. A perusal of the titles of projects funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, illustrates this fact. The following three exemplars were chosen from a list produced from a search of the CRISP database as mounted on the World Wide Web (gopher://gopher.nih.gov) site at the National Institutes of Health.

1. "CNS Effects of Alcohol - Cellular Neurobiology" has a stated purpose to continue its long term, cooperative, interdisciplinary research." One of its subthemes is "the molecular and cellular mechanisms of short term ethanol intoxication, and its endocrine, metabolic and behavioral concomitants" which demonstrates the variety of disciplines that are involved. 2. Christine Cassel was awarded a Geriatric Leadership Academic Award. This award "will assist her in expanding interdisciplinary research in aging at the University of Chicago and in the broader academic community throughout this city." Cassel will deal with a new basic science research facility, a new Department of Health study, as wen as foster "collaborative aging research in the social and biomedical sciences." A prime example of one researcher blending several disciplines into a research project. 3. Finally, the Western Consortium for Public Health submitted a project entitled "Meta-Analysis - Social Relationships and Drinking Outcome." The consortium proposed to determine the association between social relationship factor and alcoholism treatment drinking outcomes." Among the areas that die study will address are alcoholism, alcoholism therapy, psychosocial rehabilitation, and quality of life.

If researchers are to conduct interdisciplinary projects, they must have appropriate outlets for dissemination. Evidence of opportunities for publication of multidisciplinary research in the health sciences may be gleaned from the List of Serials Indexed for Online Users (National Library of Medicine, 1996). Such tides as Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology, Health and Social Work, and Social Science and Medicine demonstrate the kind of breadth to be found.

In Medical Subject Headings, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) (1989) defines meta-analysis as a "quantitative method of combining the results of independent studies (usually drawn from the published literature) and synthesizing summaries and conclusions which may be used to evaluate therapeutic effectiveness, plan new studies, etc., with application chiefly in the areas of research and medicine, " (pp. 1-40). Meta-analysis began to be used as an index term that year. However, Gene V. Glass (1976) had begun using the term in 1976 (p. 3). The use of statistical techniques to combine research results might go back to Legendre in 1805 and his development of least squares (Cook et al., 1992, p. 6). In combining the results of individual agricultural experiments, two different approaches were taken. One tested for statistical significance of the combined results. The other relied "on estimating treatment effects across studies" (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 1). By the 1930s, meta-analysis research began to appear in the social sciences (Cook et al., 1992, p. 6). It was not until the late 1970s that meta-analysis began to appear in the medical literature (Schell & Rathe, 1992, p. 219).

After Glass's 1976 article, other researchers also began to refine meta-analysis procedures and publish their results (Hedges & Olkin, 1985; Rosenthal, 1984; Wolf, 1986; Cooper, 1979). The medical community was still hesitant to accept meta-analysis studies and to believe in the validity of the results. A group at Oxford University in the 1980s began to change this. This group "took the approach of gathering all studies, published and unpublished, and excluding those that used different endpoints" (Schell & Rathe, 1992, p. 219). Using studies on therapeutic issues, the British called their research overviews, and they recommended that their conclusions be used in clinical trials for a further check of the validity of their results (Yusuf, Collins, et al., 1985; Yusuf, Petro, et al., 1985).