Question

How do you do an example of search strategy with inclusion and exclusion articles.

Answer 1

Creating a Search Strategy
A well constructed search strategy is the core of your systematic review and will be reported on in the methods section of your paper. The search strategy retrieves the majority of the studies you will assess for eligibility & inclusion. The quality of the search strategy also affects what items may have been missed. Informationists can be partners in this process.

Keywords vs. Index Terms
Both types of search terms are useful & both should be used in your search.

Keywords help to broaden your results. They will be searched for at least in journal titles, author names, article titles, & article abstracts. They can also be tagged to search all text.

Index/subject terms help to focus your search appropriately, looking for items that have had a specific term applied by an indexer.

Types of studies: Primary quantitative research studies. Study designs including randomised controlled trials (RCTs), non-randomised controlled trials, controlled before-after studies, controlled interrupted time series studies, economic studies (cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, cost-benefit analysis, economic modelling) of public health which the outcome is measured before and after the intervention or an intervention is studied against another intervention with baseline or control group.

Populations of interest: Populations affected by humanitarian crises and receiving humanitarian assistance in low and middle-income countries (based upon World Bank country classification).

Health outcomes and outputs of interest: Primary outcomes (e.g. morbidity, mortality, vaccination status), secondary outcomes (e.g. contraceptive prevalence rate), and primary outputs (e.g. malaria bed nets distributed, nutrition supplements provided etc).

Crisis Phase: Studies that occur in humanitarian crises including those that evaluate: i) the impact of preparedness and resilience on public health outcomes during a humanitarian crises and/or ii) studies that evaluate the impact of public health interventions during the acute, chronic, or early recovery phases of humanitarian crises.

Data type(s): Must include primary data.

Date of intervention and publication: Date range.

Publication language: English, French etc.

Search Filters Inclusion Exclusion Criteria

A typical database search filter allows you to narrow results so that you retrieve articles that are most relevant to your research question. Filter types vary by database & include:

• Article/publication type
• Publication dates
• Species
• Language
• Sex
• Subject
• Ages

In a systematic review search, you should use care when applying filters, as you may lose articles inadvertently. For more information, see, particularly regarding language & format filters.