Meta-synthesis method is proposed to tackle with open complex giant system problems which cannot be effectively solved by traditional reductionism methods by a Chinese system scientist Qian, Xuesen (Tsien HsueShen) around the early 1990s. The method emphasizes the synthesis of collected information and knowledge of various kinds of experts, and combining quantitative methods with qualitative kn...

Introduction. Meta-synthesis methods may help to make more sense of information behaviour research evidence. Aims and objectives. The objectives are to: 1) identify and examine the theoretical research strategies commonly used in information behaviour research; 2) discuss metasynthesis methods that might be appropriate to the type of research studies normally encountered in information behaviou...

Qualitative meta-synthesis is an emerging method for synthesis of findings of qualitative studies. Based on a qualitative meta-synthesis study on the lived experiences of immigrant Asian nurses working in Western countries (Xu, 2007), this paper discusses several methodological issues and challenges encountered during the data collection and analysis processes and strategies used to resolve the...

This paper offered a procedure for ranking the entrepreneurial and innovative indicators using Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), taking into account three individual,organizational and cultural dimensions simultaneously in decision making procedure. Henceforward, by using the Meta synthesis framework, the form of group classification of indicators from afinding’s combination was suggested ...

A novel, ultrafast, mild and scalable amide bond formation strategy in methanol using simple thioacids and amines is described. The mechanism suggests that the coupling reactions are initially mediated by CuSO(4)·5H(2)O and subsequently catalyzed by in situ generated copper sulfide. The pure peptides were isolated in satisfactory yields in less than 5 minutes.

Backbone-fluorinated amino acids exhibit unique conformational behaviour, and have potential utility as components of bioactive shape-controlled peptides. However, methods for the elaboration of backbone-fluorinated amino acids have thus far been limited to solution phase peptide coupling reactions. In this paper, protocols are developed that allow the successful manipulation of backbone-fluori...

BACKGROUND Syntheses of qualitative studies can inform health policy, services and our understanding of patient experience. Meta-ethnography is a systematic seven-phase interpretive qualitative synthesis approach well-suited to producing new theories and conceptual models. However, there are concerns about the quality of meta-ethnography reporting, particularly the analysis and synthesis proces...

Decision Support System (DSS) aims to provide effective support for solving unstructured, ill-structured or wicked problems as its initial emergence in the late 1960s. The ever-lasting complexity which exists in social world brings a great deal of uncertainties in human activities, mainly for decision makers who are in morass of overwhelming flow of data, information and knowledge but still lac...

In evidence-based medicine, meta-analysis is an important statistical technique for combining the findings from independent clinical trials which have attempted to answer similar questions about treatment’s clinical effectiveness [1]. Normally, such meta-analyses are pair-wise treatment comparisons, which only include the comparisons between two treatments, e.g. treatment A and placebo. When ad...