Confronta i metodi

	Revisione narrativa della letteratura	Meta-Analisi
Campo	Scrittura accademica	Scrittura accademica
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	1900	1976
Ideatore	Research community (traditional academic writing format)	Glass (1976, term coining); Fisher and Pearson (statistical foundations)
Tipo	Document Type	Document Type
Fonte seminale	Green, B. N., Johnson, C. D., & Adams, A. (2006). Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 5(3), 101–117.	Page, M. J., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71.
Alias	narrative review, literature survey, interpretive review, state-of-the-art review	quantitative synthesis, meta-synthesis, pooled analysis, statistical integration
Correlati	3	2
Sintesi	A narrative literature review is an interpretive synthesis of published research organized around themes, concepts, or historical progression rather than systematic search. Unlike systematic reviews, narrative reviews employ subjective study selection, do not require protocol registration, and prioritize depth of interpretation over exhaustive comprehensiveness. Narrative reviews are valuable for conceptual synthesis, exploring emerging fields with sparse literature, and providing historical context; they have been the traditional form of scholarly literature synthesis since the inception of academic journals.	Meta-analysis is the statistical pooling of quantitative findings from multiple independent studies to produce a combined effect estimate. By aggregating data across studies, meta-analysis increases statistical power, reduces random error, and provides a precise summary of an intervention's effectiveness or an association's magnitude. Gene V. Glass coined the term in 1976, formalizing a technique that has become indispensable for evidence synthesis in medicine, psychology, education, and other evidence-based disciplines.