Searching for systematic reviews of the effects of social and environmental interventions: a case study of children and obesity

Woodman, Jenny; Harden, Angela; Thomas, James; Brunton, Jeff; Kavanagh, Jennifer; Stansfield, Claire

doi:10.3163/1536-5050.98.2.006

Cited by 17 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Stansfield, Brunton and Rees (2013) examined qualitative reviews on transport, motherhood, and obesity, finding that around a third of the 229 studies would have been missed if only databases had been used, no matter how many were searched. Similar figures were found in: a review deriving 21% of the included publications from citation searching, websites, and hand-searching (Stansfield, Kavanagh, Rees, Gomersall, & Thomas, 2012); a search on childhood obesity where 13% of reviews came from websites, library catalogues, and bibliographies (Woodman et al, 2010); and a review on the built environment where a quarter of studies required specialized sources and grey literature (Weaver et al, 2002).…”

Section: Range Of Search Techniquessupporting

confidence: 55%

The Contributions of MEDLINE, Other Bibliographic Databases and Various Search Techniques to NICE Public Health Guidance

Levay

Raynor

Tuvey

2015

EBLIP

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Objective -To make recommendations for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the factors to consider when choosing databases and search techniques when producing systematic reviews to support public health guidance development.Methods -Retrospective analysis of how the publications included in systematic reviews commissioned by NICE on obesity, spatial planning, and tuberculosis were retrieved. The Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2015, 10.1 51 included publications were checked to see if they were found from searching MEDLINE, another database or through other search techniques.Results -MEDLINE contributed 24.2% of the publications included in the obesity review, none of the publications in the spatial planning review and 72% of those in the tuberculosis review. Other databases accounted for 9.1% of included publications in obesity, 20% in spatial planning and 4% in tuberculosis. Non-database methods provided 42.4% of the included publications in the obesity review, compared to 5% in the spatial planning review and 24% in the tuberculosis review. It was not possible to establish retrospectively how 24.2% of the publications in the obesity review and 75% in the spatial planning review were found.Conclusions -Topic-specific databases and non-database search techniques were useful for tailoring the resources to the review questions. The value of MEDLINE in these reviews was affected by the degree of overlap with clinical topics, the domain of public health, and the need to find grey literature. The factors that NICE considers when planning a systematic search are the multidisciplinary nature of public health and the different types of evidence required.

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Section: Range Of Search Techniquessupporting

confidence: 55%

The Contributions of MEDLINE, Other Bibliographic Databases and Various Search Techniques to NICE Public Health Guidance

Levay

Raynor

Tuvey

2015

EBLIP

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“…In addition, Woodman et al . () found that specialist review databases including DARE and DoPHER were time efficient places to search for reviews on health inequalities.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Health Technology Assessment database hosted by Centre for Reviews and Dissemination These sources were selected as they are known to have a wide range of up-to-date systematic reviews relevant to public health and health promotion. In addition, Woodman et al (2010) found that specialist review databases including DARE and DoPHER were time efficient places to search for reviews on health inequalities.…”

Section: Research Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Broad review topics and those with hard-to-detect a evidence are at particular risk of systematically missing evidence. Indeed, it is well noted that systematic reviews of complex and heterogeneous evidence require special approaches to study identification (Greenhalgh and Peacock, 2005;Wentz et al, 2001;Woodman et al, 2010). Such approaches include searching a large number of databases which cover a range of disciplines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Techniques for identifying cross-disciplinary and ‘hard-to-detect’ evidence for systematic review

et al. 2013

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Driven by necessity in our own complex review, we developed alternative systematic ways of identifying relevant evidence where the key concepts are generally not focal to the primary studies' aims and are found across multiple disciplines-that is, hard-to-detect evidence. Specifically, we sought to identify evidence on community engagement in public health interventions that aim to reduce health inequalities. Our initial search strategy used text mining to identify synonyms for the concept 'community engagement'. We conducted a systematic search for reviews on public health interventions, supplemented by searches of trials databases. We then used information in the reviews' evidence tables to gather more information about the included studies than was evident in the primary studies' own titles or abstracts. We identified 319 primary studies cited in reviews after full-text screening. In this paper, we retrospectively reflect on the challenges and benefits of the approach taken. We estimate that more than a quarter of the studies that were identified would have been missed by typical searching and screening methods. This identification strategy was highly effective and could be useful for reviews of broad research questions, or where the key concepts are unlikely to be the main focus of primary research.

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“…When the topic of study is related to interdisciplinary fields, selection of information source is more difficult ( 1 , 10 - 12 ). Researchers in these fields tend to search several bibliographic databases ( 13 ); for example, Telemedicine is a new issue in health sciences field which is highly related to technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Retrieval in Telemedicine: a Comparative Study on Bibliographic Databases

Ahmadi¹,

Sarabi²,

Orak³

et al. 2015

Acta Inform Med

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Background and Aims:The first step in each systematic review is selection of the most valid database that can provide the highest number of relevant references. This study was carried out to determine the most suitable database for information retrieval in telemedicine field.Methods:Cinhal, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases were searched for telemedicine matched with Education, cost benefit and patient satisfaction. After analysis of the obtained results, the accuracy coefficient, sensitivity, uniqueness and overlap of databases were calculated.Results:The studied databases differed in the number of retrieved articles. PubMed was identified as the most suitable database for retrieving information on the selected topics with the accuracy and sensitivity ratios of 50.7% and 61.4% respectively. The uniqueness percent of retrieved articles ranged from 38% for Pubmed to 3.0% for Cinhal. The highest overlap rate (18.6%) was found between PubMed and Web of Science. Less than 1% of articles have been indexed in all searched databases.Conclusion:PubMed is suggested as the most suitable database for starting search in telemedicine and after PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science can retrieve about 90% of the relevant articles.

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Searching for systematic reviews of the effects of social and environmental interventions: a case study of children and obesity

Cited by 17 publications

References 9 publications

The Contributions of MEDLINE, Other Bibliographic Databases and Various Search Techniques to NICE Public Health Guidance

The Contributions of MEDLINE, Other Bibliographic Databases and Various Search Techniques to NICE Public Health Guidance

Techniques for identifying cross-disciplinary and ‘hard-to-detect’ evidence for systematic review

Information Retrieval in Telemedicine: a Comparative Study on Bibliographic Databases

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