title: The meta-analytic big bang.
abstract: This article looks at the impact of meta-analysis and then explores why meta-analysis was developed at the time and by the scholars it did in the social sciences in the 1970s. For the first problem, impact, it examines the impact of meta-analysis using citation network analysis. The impact is seen in the sciences, arts and humanities, and on such contemporaneous developments as multilevel modeling, medical statistics, qualitative methods, program evaluation, and single-case design. Using a constrained snowball sample of citations, we highlight key articles that are either most highly cited or most central to the systematic review network. Then, the article examines why meta-analysis came to be in the 1970s in the social sciences through the work of Gene Glass, Robert Rosenthal, and Frank Schmidt, each of whom developed similar theories of meta-analysis at about the same time. The article ends by explaining how Simonton's chance configuration theory and Campbell's evolutionary epistemology can illuminate why meta-analysis occurred with these scholars when it did and not in medical sciences.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, University of California, Merced, CA, USA.
authors.forename: William R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Shadish
authors.affiliation: 420 Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Jesse D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Lecy
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000266:history*; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000266:history*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D012107:Research Design; D012196:Review Literature as Topic