The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

Is Meta Analysis appropriate for this literature
The discursive summary was not as informative as it might have been either with respect
to summarised significance levels or with respect to summarised category tables, because
it reflected the conclusions of the studies, which tend to provide equivocal answers to
imprecise questions. Research environments are difficult to control, common definitions
are not always available nor accepted, and methods, techniques and sampling
characteristics vary from study to study. This situation is made more difficult by the
proliferation of studies that address common research questions (e.g. is there a difference
between pictures by abnormal groups and pictures by normal controls), but do not report
essentials such as definitions or reliability of variables, sample sizes, statistical methods
(many report 'significant' results, but not the number of tests, which variables were tested
and how many dropped), or even fully report the characteristics of their experimental
group. Furthermore their literature reviews are notorious for depending on the subjective
judgments, preferences and biases of the reviewers. Conflicting interpretation of the
evidence is common and consistent 210 .
There is no lack of literature but the study area shows what Rosenthal 211 calls
poor cumulation, lack of orderly development building directly on the older work. Each
study seems to replicate the same process to produce conflicting results which can lead
210
See for instance: E. Ulman and B.I. Levy (1974) An Experimental Approach to the Judgement of
Psychopathology from Paintings, Am. J. Art Therapy , V.8:3-12 (reprinted 1975, 1984 and 1992) although
their results showed that health workers scored no differently and some people with no experience of
psychiatric paintings were more accurate, they concluded that diagnostic classification of pictures was a
skill which could be taught and this opinion has been related through the later literature as a proven fact.
211
Robert Rosenthal (1984), Meta Analytic Procedures for Social Research , Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, p.9-
10.
166