Developing Optimal Search Strategies for Retrieving Clinically Relevant Qualitative Studies in EMBASE

Abstract

Qualitative researchers address many issues relevant to patient health care. Their studies appear in an array of journals, making literature searching difficult. Large databases such as EMBASE provide a means of retrieving qualitative research, but these studies represent only a minuscule fraction of published articles, making electronic retrieval problematic. Little work has been done on developing search strategies for the detection of qualitative studies. The objective of this study was to develop optimal search strategies to retrieve qualitative studies in EMBASE for the 2000 publishing year. The authors conducted an analytic survey, comparing hand searches of journals with retrievals from EMBASE for candidate search terms and combinations. Search strategies reached peak sensitivities at 94.2% and peak specificities of 99.7%. Combining search terms to optimize the combination of sensitivity and specificity resulted in values over 89% for both. The authors identified search strategies with high performance for retrieving qualitative studies in EMBASE.

Keywords

information storage and retrieval qualitative research medical informatics

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barbour, R. S. (2001). Checklists for improving rigour in qualitative research: Acase of the tail wagging the dog? British Medical Journal, 322, 1115-1117.

Evans, D. (2002). Database searches for qualitative research. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 90(3), 290-293.

Grant, M. J. (2004). Howdoes your searching grow? Asurvey of search preferences and the use if optimal search strategies in the identification of qualitative research. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 21(1), 21-32.

Green, J. , & Britten, N. (1998). Qualitative research and evidence based medicine. British Medical Journal, 316, 1230-1232.

Haynes, R. B. ,& Wilczynski, N. L. (for the Hedges Team). (2004). Optimal search strategies for retrieving scientifically strong studies of diagnosis from MEDLINE. British Medical Journal, 328, 1040-1040.

Haynes, R. B. , Wilczynski, N. , McKibbon, K. A. , Walker, C. J. ,& Sinclair, J. C. (1994). Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound studies in MEDLINE. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 1, 447-458.

Health Information Research Unit . (2005). The “Hedges” project. Retrieved October 18, 2005, from http://hiru.mcmaster.ca/hedges/indexhiru.htm

Morse, J. M. , Barrett, M. , Mayan, M. , Olson, K. , & Spiers, J. (2002). Verification strategies for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1(2), Article 2. Retrieved October 12, 2005, from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/1_2Final/pdf/morseetal.pdf

Wilczynski, N. L. ,& Haynes, R. B. (2002). Robustness of empirical search strategies for clinical content in MEDLINE. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 9(Symposium Suppl.), 904-908.

10.

Wilczynski, N. L. ,& Haynes, R. B. (for the Hedges Team). (2003). Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound causation studies in MEDLINE. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 10(Symposium Suppl.), 719-723.

11.

Wilczynski, N. L. , McKibbon, K. A. , & Haynes, R. B. (2001). Enhancing retrieval of best evidence for health care from bibliographic databases: Calibration of the hand search of the literature. Medinfo, 10(Pt 1), 390-393.

12.

Wilczynski, N. L. , Walker, C. J. , McKibbon, K. A. , & Haynes, R. B. (1993). Assessment of methodologic search filters in MEDLINE. Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care, 1993, 601-605.

13.

Wong, S. S. L. , Wilczynski, N. L. , & Haynes, R. B. (for the Hedges Team). (2004). Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically relevant qualitative studies in MEDLINE. Medinfo, 2004, 311-316.

14.

Wong, S. S. L. , Wilczynski, N. L. , Haynes, R. B. , & Ramkissoonsingh, R. (for the Hedges Team). (2003). Developing optimal search strategies for detecting sound clinical prediction studies in MEDLINE. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 10(Symposium Suppl.), 728-732.