The Growth of Meta-Analytic Literature from 1980 to 1993

A search of the literature was undertaken to estimate the number of meta-analytic studies that have been published in the social and health sciences to date. Altogether, 1,874 published quantitative reviews were located by the end of 1994: 892 in the health sciences, 982 in the social sciences. Trends from 1980 to 1993 indicate that, while the social sciences embraced the technique earlier, health researchers are now publishing almost twice as many meta-analyses as their social science colleagues.