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From Meta-Analysis to Practice: Understanding How Education Research is Interpreted and Applied

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Abstract

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for summarizing research that policymakers and practitioners can use to make decisions in education contexts. A high-quality meta-analysis includes detailed reporting of each stage to increase transparency and reproducibility and mitigate researcher bias (Pigott & Polanin, 2020). This leads to highly detailed reports that can be difficult for a non-technical audience to interpret accurately or appropriately. Building on a previously conducted meta-review of quality and use of research evidence (URE) strategies in education meta-analyses (Pellegrini et al., 2025b), this study explored the documents that cite meta-analytic research in practice contexts, the evidence they report, and how strategies employed by the meta-analysis to communicate evidence is associated with documents using the evidence. A sample of twenty meta-analyses in K-12 education were forward searched to identify 186 unique non-research, practitioner-facing documents that contained 197 references to the meta-analyses in the sample. Documents were coded for their goals and the content reported related to effects and contextual information. In general, documents were published by researchers (73%) in traditional research publications (33%) or informal blog-style posts (30%). Intervention effects were most often described (57%) and did not include statistical effect sizes (74%). On average, each meta-analysis had 13.2 citing documents, with meta-analyses on reading having a higher average along with meta-analyses that included a section dedicated to policy and practice implications. In general, strategies aimed towards increasing the use of meta-analytic evidence by making the results more accessible to interest-holders did not lead to more citing documents. This finding suggests that the main strategies to increase use (including an interest-holder, transforming effect sizes, visualizations, and dedicated implications) are not being used appropriately or are not as useful to interest-holders as researchers thought. Additionally, there is still some disconnect in the most relevant information a meta-analysis can offer interest-holders. Documents rarely reported the variations in effects of an intervention that tell us for whom and under what conditions an intervention works best. This study concludes with a discussion of the results within the context of bridging the gap between researchers and practice. Recommendations for researchers, limitations, and future directions are also discussed.

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Description
Date
2026-03-30
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
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Journal Issue
Keywords
Evidence Synthesis, Research Communication, Evidence Use, Practice
Citation
Scarbrough, Hannah. 2026. "From Meta-Analysis to Practice: Understanding How Education Research is Interpreted and Applied." Dissertation, Georgia State University. http://doi.org/10.57709/69
Embargo Lift Date
2027-03-30
DOI
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