Can one perform a meta analysis on solely the results of a study, without the use of raw data? [closed]

If not, since a systematic review would be the next option, are there any analyses you can conduct on the results of the studies that one intends to analyze

• Can you edit this to clarify exactly what you mean since as @bjorn points out what you describe is exactly what meta-analysis does. – mdewey Dec 31 '18 at 12:01

I do not know what precisely you mean by raw data, but let us assume $$a=1,...,N$$ articles each conducting a study using there own dataset $$D_a$$. They each try to estimate the same theoretical parameter $$\theta$$ - for example the wage returns to education - then you could simply build a taxonomy for the variables and regress estimates $$\hat \theta_a$$ on dummies for which type of variables they had included in their models when estimating $$\theta$$. This would only require information on which type of variables they include in their statistical model and the estimates they arrived at but would not include the original data used in the articles $$D_a$$. Here is a concrete example of such a study from the field of transportation economics concerning estimation of agglomeration effects metastudy example
The meta-analysis literature is primarily about doing exactly that. I.e. methods too combine evident be from multiple studies using either using an estimate $$\hat{\theta}$$ of the quantity of interest and its standard error (that's the standard scenario), or using some other kind of aggregate data that might be reported in journal articles or registries.