As I write, the first day of 2014 is fading and the new year will quickly become just a fact along the way. The reprieve from emails and demands that the holidays permit will be a distant memory. And big data will grow bigger and bigger still and require more and more help from cool research synthesis procedures and meta-analytic statistics. That's why we are here. I am teaching a graduate seminar this spring on the subject, at the University of Connecticut, and I've asked…

Most of what scholars do hinges on having sufficient skill to create meaningful assessments of knowledge and the evidence base that underlies it. Meta-analysis is a skill set you can develop if you work at it with enough deliberative practice. How much deliberate practice does it take?…

1. Advance the science. If we do meta-analysis better, science and application will profit, and resources can be better allocated for these purposes.
   
   
2. Assume a general, broad audience. Some, perhaps most, readers will not be university affiliated at all. Some may have no clue (yet) what the heck a ‘meta-analysis’ is. (Perhaps they think, “super-Freud,” as though "meta-analysis" means "super-psycho-analytic"?) Thus,…