An educational psychologist is researching the impact of retrieval practice on student exam performance. Instead of conducting a new empirical investigation, they choose to carry out a meta-analysis using secondary quantitative data from 20 previously published studies.
Which of the following is a major limitation of using a meta-analysis for this research?
It is highly susceptible to publication bias, where studies with null or non-significant findings are omitted, potentially inflating the overall effect size.
It is incapable of producing a quantitative, overall statistic to summarise the cumulative strength of the relationship or difference.
It requires the psychologist to personally recruit and obtain active informed consent from all participants in the original cohorts.
It has lower statistical power and reliability compared to any of the individual primary studies included in the analysis.
