Meta-analyses in alcohol and other drug abuse treatment research.
Meta-analysis is a quantitative method of synthesizing empirical evidence across a collection of related studies and addresses many of the weaknesses of traditional narrative forms of reviewing. This paper describes the basic methods for conducting a state-of-the-art meta-analysis and criticizes 11 extant meta-analyses of alcohol and other drug abuse treatment programs. Eight of these 11 meta-analyses used questionable methods and contributed little to our understanding of the effects of these programs. The paper concludes with a proposal for an archive of alcohol and other drug services research to facilitate and improve the quality of future meta-analyses.
Wilson
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DB
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-8235, USA. dwilson@crim.umd.edu
D000437:Alcoholism / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D011786:Quality Control; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000628:therapy*