Meta-synthesis: A Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

Meta-synthesis is a systematic review that evaluates number of interrelated qualitative studies. Although meta-synthesis method was used for the first time in an educational research in 1988, it has been appeared widely in medicine and nursing researches. Nevertheless, there is a growing interest in meta-synthesis in the field of education in Turkey and abroad in recent years. As a result of literature review of meta-synthesis, we noticed that this method is been applied in different ways by different researchers in Turkey. The purpose of this study is to explain the historical development of meta-synthesis, the different perceptions of meta-synthesis during this development, how to perform a meta-synthesis research, and how to provide reliability and validity of a meta-synthesis research. A concept analysis method was utilized to achieve this goal and the findings were discussed in detail.