Introduction to Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Hi there! I’ve also been on a similar quest to yourself and started to learn a bit of R (actually way more fun than it sounds, so satisfying).

There’s a fair few online resources, but I recently saw these two interesting ones which are free(ish) if you do them quickly, and nevertheless cheap if not. (I haven’t used them yet, have been piecing stuff together from YouTube lol but I think coursera is a pretty cool resource)

Imperial offers this: https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-statistics-data-analysis-public-health
(For R)

John Hopkins offers this: https://www.coursera.org/learn/systematic-review

Hope that helps :)

I wouldn't recommend getting advice on approaches for doing a meta-analysis from replies on reddit. There's lots of resources available for how to conduct this kind of research, so best to start there - see this paper as a very basic starting point. There's well-established protocols for how to approach a meta-analysis which need to be researched before you jump into the analysis. Even before the meta-analysis, you'll need to perform a systematic review of the literature where you'll select the papers which will be used in the meta-analysis.

You'll need to learn how to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis in a methodologically appropriate way, and luckily there's plenty of resources out there to learn how to do that. If your university doesn't offer systematic review training, there's courses out there - example. There's also plenty of free introductory lectures on YouTube which will be worth looking into. Basically, I would make sure you fully understand the concepts behind systematic reviews before even thinking about data analysis - it'll make the actual research & analysis part a lot smoother.

and a very basic tip: use a reference manager (e.g. Mendeley, EndNote), it's essential!

>QQ: Is there a general way to find survey articles that summarize either the last [time period] of progress, or better, once some area is moderately-well explored, summarize {here's how we noticed, here's what we looked for, here's what we found, here's why we think this topic is mostly played out}.

They're called meta-analyses and they can be tough to read too unless you know what you're doing.

Here's an example of one on the SARs virus (what COVID is):

"SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence worldwide: a systematic review and meta-analysis": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7584920/

John Hopkins has a Coursera course on this topic if you're interested:

"Introduction to Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis": https://www.coursera.org/learn/systematic-review?

There's also things like "scoping reviews" which are a newer, quicker form of systematic review:

https://training.cochrane.org/resource/scoping-reviews-what-they-are-and-how-you-can-do-them

And you can always just do your own literature review:

"Conducting Your Literature Review": https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/4313055

Step by step guide written for the undergraduate in mind.

There's also a few companies like dcyphr that are trying to create a market for "research distillations" but jury is out on whether they'll ultimately be successful. A few papers have already been uploaded, maybe you might find a few you like: https://dcyphr.org/about

It's basically Sparknotes for research, but don't get your hopes too high. It's really, really new. The other methods I mentioned are more tried and true.