My research involves literature review, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis activities. Literature reviews (e.g., systematic, narrative, scoping) organize, describe, and synthesize the works of previous research related to a specific topic or problem that is being investigated. They provide a critical evaluation of the state of the research on that topic and identify gaps and needs for more research. Meta-analysis and meta-synthesis provide systematic methodologies to collect and report quantitative and qualitative data across multiple studies. Meta-analysis is a statistical means to evaluate studies together to gain an understanding of the magnitude of similarities and differences in the reported outcomes. Meta-synthesis examines a group of research studies focused on a similar topic or phenomenon as an integration of results from qualitative studies to interpret the findings.
Digging into the literature and using these methods to synthesize and understand it provides critical information for the design of innovative products and programs to solve problems of practice. I use these in my research to identify the state of a problem so the research and practice are more well informed and can have innovative solutions. For example, my manuscript reviewing the literature on self-directed learning in PBL (Leary et al., 2019) is useful in the design of professional learning opportunities that want to use PBL to build this skill. I also believe it is very important for researchers to understand the difference between different research synthesis activities, so my manuscript describing what is a literature review versus a meta-analysis versus a meta-synthesis is helpful (Leary & Walker, 2018). I have also conducted a literature review focused on professional development in online teaching (Leary et al., 2020).