Iranian Journal of

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The popularity of qualitative research in the health sciences is steadily increasing. However individual qualitative research, alone, is unable to provide a comprehensive and broad understanding of the phenomenon under study. This may be the reason why the results of these studies are uncommonly used by health policy makers. Meta-synthesis is a method in which the results of a body of qualitative research are aggregated in order to produce a new and comprehensive interpretation of the studied phenomenon, in such a way that the final result still represents and includes the findings of the original studies. The lack of a comprehensive article in Farsi language in this field, encouraged the authors to write this paper to introduce this method and explain some of its essential components to familiarize health professionals, including researchers and students, with meta-synthesis. In this article, the following components of meta-synthesis are described: the definition, the necessity and the how-to of meta-synthesis a determining research question, the selection and analysis of the original studies, and lastly, meta-synthesis conductors.

Keywords: Meta-synthesis, Qualitative research, Meta-analysis

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