A growing body of primary study and systematic review literature evaluates interventions and phenomena in applied and health psychology. Reviews of reviews (i.e., meta-reviews) systematically synthesise and utilise this vast and often overwhelming literature; yet, currently there are few practical guidelines for meta-review authors to follow.
The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the best practice guidelines for all research synthesis and to detail additional specific considerations and methodological details for the best practice of conducting a rigorous meta-review.
This article provides readers with six systematic and practical steps along with accompanying examples to address with rigor the unique challenges that arise when authors familiar with systematic review methods begin a meta-review: (a) detailing a clear scope, (b) identifying synthesis literature through strategic searches, (c) considering datedness of the literature, (d) addressing overlap among included reviews, (e) choosing and applying review quality tools, and (f) appropriate options for handling the synthesis and reporting of the vast amount of data collected in a meta-review.
We have curated best practice recommendations and practical tips for conducting a meta-review. We anticipate that assessments of meta-review quality will ultimately formalise best-method guidelines.

Translational science conceptualizes healthcare as a concerted set of processes that integrate research findings from the bench to the bedside. This model of healthcare is effectiveness-focused, patient-centered, and evidence-based, and yields evidence-based revisions of practice-based guidelines, which emerge from research synthesis protocols in comparative effectiveness research that are disseminated in systematic reviews. Systematic reviews produce qualitative and quantitative consensi of the best available evidence. The quantitative consensus is derived from meta-analysis protocols that are often achieved by probabilistic approach Bayesian statistical models.

Like all forms of empirical inquiry, research syntheses can be carried out in ways that lead to more or less valid inferences about the phenomenon under study. This synthesis of syntheses (a) examined the methods employed in the syntheses of the effects of after-school programs (ASPs) and determined how closely they conformed to what is defined as best practice for research synthesis, (b) compared the inferences drawn from the ASP research literature by each synthesis with the inferences that plausibly could be made from the data they covered, and (c) determined the points of consistency across the syntheses with regard to both potentially valid and potentially invalid conclusions. It was found that the 12 syntheses used highly divergent methods, varying in problem definitions, search strategies, inclusion criteria for individual studies, and techniques for drawing conclusions about the cumulative evidence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.