เปรียบเทียบวิธี

	การศึกษาเชิงนิเวศแบบอภิมาน	การศึกษาเชิงนิเวศ
สาขาวิชา	ระบาดวิทยา	ระบาดวิทยา
ตระกูล	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
ปีกำเนิด	1990s	19th century (Snow 1854); formalised mid-20th century
ผู้ริเริ่ม	Morgenstern, Blettner, and colleagues in epidemiology methodology	Various; foundational work by John Snow (1854) and systematised in modern form by Brian MacMahon and colleagues
ประเภท	Quantitative synthesis design	Observational epidemiological study
แหล่งต้นตำรับ	Blettner, M., Sauerbrei, W., Schlehofer, B., Scheuchenpflug, T., & Friedenreich, C. (1999). Traditional reviews, meta-analyses and pooled analyses in epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology, 28(1), 1–9.	Morgenstern, H. (1995). Ecologic studies in epidemiology: concepts, principles, and methods. Annual Review of Public Health, 16(1), 61–81.
ชื่อเรียกอื่น	ecological meta-analysis, aggregate-level meta-analysis, meta-analytic ecologic design, population-level meta-analysis	aggregate study, correlational study, ecological correlation study, population-level study
ที่เกี่ยวข้อง	2	5
สรุป	A meta-analytic ecological study synthesises data from multiple populations or geographic units — rather than from individual patients — to estimate associations between exposures and health outcomes. By pooling aggregate-level statistics across studies or regions, it extends the reach of ecological reasoning to a wider evidence base, enabling detection of exposure-outcome relationships that single-population ecological analyses may miss due to limited variability or sample size.	An ecological study is an observational epidemiological design in which the unit of analysis is a group or population — a country, region, city, or time period — rather than an individual. Exposures and outcomes are measured as aggregates (rates, proportions, or means) and then correlated across groups to generate or evaluate hypotheses about population-level associations between risk factors and disease.