In the preceding chapters we examined the history of cultivation theory and analysis, providing a description of its major studies and critiques. Those chapters represent the story of cultivation as we tell it. Others may, of course, tell it differently. And this points up one important problem with any narrative evaluation of the results: other observers may not recognize the telling as “objective.”

Although no account can be perfectly objective, in this chapter we try to get around the natty problems of objectivity (at least somewhat) by using meta-analysis, a technique that summarizes results from a different, non-narrative, perspective. Meta-analysis allows researchers to look at separate, independent studies as individual “data points” and to determine whether these studies can be seen as a single body of research which yields a single conclusion.

What is Meta-Analysis, Anyway?

This section is for readers who do not have the slightest idea of what we mean by “meta-analysis.” (Others may wish to read it anyway.) Earlier, we noted that, theoretically, any cultivation analysis can be compared against any other, because they are all testing essentially the same thing. This means that, with a little effort, we can look at the last twenty years of cultivation research as a single, unified inquiry into relationships between television exposure and people's beliefs about the world. And that is exactly the foundation on which this chapter is built.