Significant knowledge in the social sciences accrues ever too slowly. A major reason is that various research studies on a particular question tend to be of dissimilar designs, making their results difficult to compare. An even more important factor is that social science studies frequently produce conflicting results,which hinder theoretical developments and confuse those responsible for the implementation of social policies. In this pioneering effort the authors suggest criteria for determining when data from dissimilar studies can be pooled. Methods for recognizing fundamental differences in research designs, and for avoiding the creation of artificial differences, are offered. A paradigm, labeled the
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 445 citations exist upstream.