Reflecting on a meta-synthesis of qualitative papers concerned with pregnant women's decision-making about prenatal screening for Down syndrome: a commentary on Reid, Sinclair, Barr, Dobbs and Crealey.

0277-9536/$ – see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.09.011 I read the article ‘‘A meta-synthesis of pregnant women’s decision-making processeswith regard to antenatal screening for Down syndrome’’ by Reid, Sinclair, Barr, Dobbs, and Crealey (2009) with great interest for three reasons. Firstly, it promised to draw together qualitative research concerned with pregnant women’s decisions about prenatal screening for chromosomal anomalies such as Down syndrome. Secondly, the paper offered a practical test of the more general utility of meta-synthesis with qualitative data. Thirdly, at a time when academic virtue is, apparently, indicated by citation ‘metrics’, I was flattered to note that the paper which I had firstauthored (Heyman et al., 2006) featured among nine winnowed from a starting field of over 12,000. A second paper (Williams et al., 2005) authored by the same team and utilising the same data-set was also included among the chosen nine. The remarks which follow will, firstly, discuss some general issues, and, secondly, comment on the portrayal of the paper which I first authored. Themeta-synthesis presented byReid et al. appears to have been undertaken meticulously, and written up carefully and critically. I will commend the paper to students wishing to introduce themselves to this way of handling qualitative data. As the authors note, they attempted a difficult task, involving three orders of analysis