Many studies of development interventions are individually unable to provide convincing conclusions because of low statistical significance, small size, limited geographical purview and so forth. Systematic reviews and meta-analysis are forms of research synthesis that combine studies of...

Systematic reviews and meta-analysis have risen in popularity in international development to provide evidence on 'what works'. This paper reports the findings of a meta-analysis to assess the impact of microcredit on women's control over household spending to illustrate the challenges of...

Although first applied in the medical sciences in the 1970s, systematic reviews have been recently, and increasingly, used in the field of international development to examine the impacts of a range of development and humanitarian interventions. However, to date, there has been only limited...