Metasynthesis in communication research: synthesizing the past to aid the future

We conducted a comprehensive content analysis of Communication Education in order to determine the type of article and its subsequent methodology (if an original article) in an e ff ort to make an argument for greater appreciation and inclusion of metasynthesis in instructional communication scholarship. 1 Articles published in Communication Education between January 2012 and May 2022 were analyzed as the unit of analysis similar to Conley and Yun (2017). We categorized articles into the following types: editor ’ s note, forum, meta-analysis, metareview, metasynthesis, mixed methods, qualitative, quantitative, and rhetorical/critical. Our content analysis authenticated that the over-whelming majority of original research articles utilized quantitative methods. Conley and Yum ’ s (2017) research found similar fi ndings from 2000 to 2016. Quantitative methodologies have predominated the methods used by communication researchers who published in Communication Education . Qualitative methodologically driven research articles occupied a signi fi cantly smaller portion.