**1. Introduction**

126 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

Zelizer, Viviana A. (2005), *The Purchase of Intimacy*, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton

Since 1970s, along with the emerging of concept of complex problems, especially in the fields of environment, socioeconomic, population and sustainable development, there has been more and more studies turned from mathematical modeling or other qualitative methods to qualitative analysis and synthesis. Partly it is because that the studies becomes more and more cross-disciplined, on the other hand, difficulties to quantify them are the reasons. But as yet, little accumulation of the understandings have been gained from these studies. Compared to the considerable amount of attention on quantitative modeling and analysis, the attentions on the qualitative synthesis still keep a relative lack generally.

Along with increasing recognisation on the important implications for both knowledge development and the utilization of qualitative research methods in practice,and along with the explosively growing amount of scientific research, there progressed the integration synthesis method – meta-analysis. Meta-analysis helps to ensure that relevant qualitative studies are not lost in the growing body of research(Evans 2002); also meta-analysis permits those studies to be appraised and their findings to be combined (Jones 2004). More importantly, under the current situation that qualitative research is still falsely characterized as ungeneralizable, when generalization is narrowly conceived in terms of sampling and statistical significance (Sandelowski, Docherty et al. 1997), meta-analysis could achieve greater generalizability with higher level of abstraction(Estabrooks, Field et al. 1994).

Vulnerability to natural hazard is a typical research area of qualitative and multidisciplined. A wealth of empirical case studies on risk and vulnerability has been undertaken at scales ranging from household to global level. The experience in undertaking such assessments is diverse and the findings are highly context and place specific (B. L. Turner, Kasperson et al. 2003). Also, the understanding of the causal structures and dynamics of vulnerability remains patchy and anecdotal despite the advances of vulnerability research in the past two decades (Adger et al., 2005; Kasperson 2006). To-date, very few rigorous comparative studies that aim to synthesise this collective experience have been undertaken. Examples are the work of Misselhorn (2006) in the area of food insecurity in Southern Africa and that of Geist (2004) and Geist and Lambin (2004) in the area of land cover change.

A Meta-Analysis Framework and

(Matarazzo and Nijkamp 1997).

other methods.

1. Vote-counting

2. Classic or Glassian Meta-analysis

qualitative research. (Sandelowski and Barroso 2003).

in the final product(Sandelowski and Barroso 2003).

Its Application for Exploring the Driving Causes to Social Vulnerability 129

of manifest frequency effect sizes while meta-synthesis is an interpretive integration of qualitative findings that are themselves interpretive syntheses of data, including the phenomenologies, ethnographies, grounded theories, and other integrated and coherent descriptions or explanations of phenomena, events, or cases that are the hallmarks of

Here the definition of "meta-analysis" is simply taken as the general term of all the different nominal meta-methods, as "…an analytical framework for comparative research that aims to draw inferences on common issues with different but allied empirical backgrounds"

Meta-analysis has now become a widely accepted research tool, encompassing a range of procedures used in a variety of disciplines, such as medicine, nursing, psychology, labor economics, environmental science, and transportation science (Gaarder 2002; Yu 2002; Greenaway, Milne et al. 2004; Travisi, Florax et al. 2004). The wide employment of metaanalysis is partially because that it is an integration which is more than the sum of parts in that it offers novel interpretations of findings(Sandelowski and Barroso 2003). In the study of Sandolowski and Barroso(2003), they found that this kind of interpretations will not be found in any single report, but rather are inferences derived from taking all of the reports in a sample as a whole. Their validity does not reside in replication logic, but rather in inclusive logic whereby all findings are accommodated and in the craftsmanship exhibited

Under the Meta-analysis framework, appropriate methods can be selected according to different research questions. Commonly used methods include the counting method, classical Meta-analysis method, Meta-analysis on effectiveness, homogeneity testing and

This approach is similar to the narrative review, which divides the results of previous researches into three groups of significant positive results, significant negative results, and non-significant results. The result of the group with most literature number then represents the entire field of study. This method is relatively simple to determine the general trend of a large number of case studies. However, this is an inaccurate statistics which relies on the statistical significance. Also each individual study is limited by the collection of samples, so

This approach evolves from the early Glass Meta-analysis. It defines research questions first, then collects case studies, followed by encoding the outputs of each features, and finally analyzes the relationship between the output values and the study characteristics. This method of Meta-analysis and its subsequent improved methods have three common characteristics: First, the selection criteria of literature is liberal, generally based on the research needs. Second, the units of analysis are the results of each single studies, and through selecting the appropriate sample size (ie, the number of literature)**,** the comparative analysis is taken. Third, Meta-analysis methods usually weaken the characteristics of each

the final results of vote-counting do not necessarily reflect the true situation.

individual study, and present the overall average characteristics instead.

Therefore, the rationale of this study is promoted by factors on both sides of methodology and research question:


To achieve the above aims, this paper applies meta-analysis in the qualitative studies with the context of the vulnerability research questions. In the second section, the methodology of meta-analysis is introduced; in the third section, the findings of the application of metaanalysis in vulnerability research are presented; finally, in the forth section, there are the discussions on both the vulnerability and the implementation of meta-analysis itself.
