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Writing a lit review? Something that I think has worked well for me and students I’ve worked with in the last couple years is making meta-analysis formatted summary tables with study characteristics and effect sizes, whether we are planning on meta-analyzing them or not. 1/5
We publish the tables in papers or in the appendix. I hope they’re useful for the reader sometimes, but mostly they help the writers! 2/5
First, they get us on the same page about the “big picture” from prior work. Probably because of our personal biases and selective attention/citation, I often realize I have a different view after seeing everything in one place! 3/5
Sometimes conventional wisdom just isn’t supported in much of the previous work because of selective citation. Others, I realize some lingering concern I had doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Others, a single study or method pops out as weird and we think more about why. 4/5
In the end, I think it saves us some time. If we do a study, the table is great for the introduction. Sometimes we decide the meta-analysis would add value. Most importantly, we allocate effort more efficiently because we have a better picture of the state of the field. 5/5
