Abstract
Many clinical decisions, risk assessments, and public health policy decisions depend on the results of epidemiologic studies. Very rarely, however, do all studies on a particular subject reach the same conclusion. Consequently, there is a need in epidemiology to synthesize differing study findings objectively. Two related approaches to synthesizing findings from multiple studies are the systematic literature review and the meta-analysis. The purposes of this chapter are to introduce each of these useful approaches, to highlight their assumptions and limitations, and to illuminate practical aspects of conducting your own systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses.
The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur.
Aristotle
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Brestoff, J.R., Van den Broeck, J. (2013). Systematic Literature Review and Meta-analysis. In: Van den Broeck, J., Brestoff, J. (eds) Epidemiology: Principles and Practical Guidelines. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5989-3_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5989-3_25
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