Published: Nov 15, 2025

Meta-ethnography is a qualitative synthesis method that goes beyond summarizing studies to interpret them together. Developed by George W. Noblit and R. Dwight Hare in 1988, it’s built around “translating” key concepts across studies to generate new, third-order insights, often theoretical models you couldn’t see from any single paper.

Noblit & Hare outlined seven iterative phases. Below is a LIS-friendly rendering:

1. Getting started – Define the phenomenon (e.g., “information avoidance in teens”). Frame a synthesis question appropriate for interpretive work.
2. Deciding what’s relevant – Purposefully sample qualitative studies that speak to your focus; document inclusion criteria. The eMERGe guidance offers concrete reporting items for this stage.
3. Reading the studies – Extract second-order constructs (authors’ interpretations, not raw quotes). Keep rich context.
4. Determining how studies are related – Map concepts across studies; note agreements, tensions, and boundaries. Recent methodological reviews explain options for relating studies.
5. Translating studies into one another – The distinctive bit: compare key concepts and carry over meanings from one study to the next (reciprocal and refutational translation).
6. Synthesizing translations – Build an overarching line-of-argument (a conceptual model or set of propositions).
7. Expressing the synthesis – Tailor your output to researchers and practitioners (e.g., a model figure, practice implications). Use the eMERGe checklist to report transparently.

The eMERGe reporting guidance (and explanatory materials) lays out 19–21 items covering all seven phases—what you decided, how you translated concepts, and how your final model links back to primary studies. It’s the go-to checklist journal reviewers now expect.

There are some common pitfalls we need to mindful about when conducting meta-ethnography:

• Treating it like a thematic review. Meta-ethnography is interpretive, centered on translation and a line-of-argument—not just aggregating themes. Use the methodological reviews to guide phases 4–6.
• Thin reporting. If readers can’t see how you got from study A to concept Z, your synthesis won’t travel. Use eMERGe’s items as a structuring template for your write-up.
• Losing context. Preserve links to study settings/populations so your model respects meaning and transferability across LIS domains.

Library and Information Science (LIS) has a deep bench of qualitative work (information behavior, user experience, community engagement, school librarianship), yet we’re often criticized for fragmented, small-N studies and underdeveloped theory. Meta-ethnography helps us synthesize those studies into a coherent conceptual contribution.