Workshop registration closed! The facility to register for workshops has closed. If you have not registered for a workshop, workshop listings will be on the Message Board in the conference foyer of The Burlington Hotel for you to register for workshops that still have spaces available.

The Methods for Research Synthesis node of the Economic and Social Research Council's National Centre for Research Methods: methodological challenges in evidence synthesis.

David Gough.
Clinical Evidence, BMJ, UK.
Sandy Oliver and Angela Harden.
Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK.
James Thomas.
Clinical Trials Office, Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Canada.

d.gough doesnotexist@cochrane.org ioe.ac.uk


Objective: To share work on methodological development in evidence synthesis and enable partnerships to develop further work.

Summary: The Methods for Research Synthesis Programme is part of the UK Economic and Social Research Council National Centre for Research Methods. The programme is based at the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) in London and is taking a wide view of the range of research questions addressed in evidence synthesis and the methodological challenges they pose. The project includes:

• a large capacity building component including the launch of a new MSc in evidence for policy and practice from Autumn 2006
• the development of methods for synthesis particularly in relation to quality appraisal of studies, user involvement, and advances in e-social science including meta-tagging frameworks and ontologies and software development
• the development of a matrix as a framework to structure the methodological challenges posed by extending research synthesis to a broader range of questions.

• share the draft version of the matrix with colleagues at the Colloquium
• to benefit from their feedback to improve the matrix further
• to begin to use the framework to generate and structure debates about methodological challenges and how these are or are not being addressed and how they may be further addressed by new methods
• to help build partnerships for further methodological work to address these challenges.