Meta-syntese af kvalitative studier: En introduktion til studier af studier af intervention

This article is written for students and PhD students in psychology. The article is in Danish. The purpose of this article is to introduce a special kind of review of existing literature known as meta-synthesis. In a meta-synthesis, qualitative studies are integrated or compared and, as a result, the essence of meta-synthesis is as a result an analytic generalization of findings in qualitative studies. Stages in meta-synthesis are outlined, especially emphasizing the interchange between research topic and aim, the systematic literature search and analysis of identified studies. An example of a meta-synthesis is used to illustrate the stages. Finally, the article includes a comparison of the knowledge derived from meta-analysis of quantitative studies and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies. The conclusion is that meta-synthesis is well suited for generating theory and may improve decision-making about intervention.