Slides to accompany 'Systematic reviews: finding the and managing the evidence'

1. Systematic reviews:
Finding and managing the evidence
Karen John-Pierre, St George’s Library
March 2021

2. Today’s learning objectives
 Understand the need for searching skills for systematic reviews and key
search tools
 Perform a sophisticated search in Embase (Ovid)
 Review search strategy and edit to improve results
 Filter, save and export results
 Managing your results and finding the articles
 Document the search process

3. Course resources
 https://libguides.sgul.ac.uk/sysreviews- LibGuide
 OpenAthens training username and password (For NHS staff)

4. What is a systematic review ?
A systematic review attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all
the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to
answer a specific research question.
Cochrane handbook
St George’s Library http://library.sgul.ac.uk

5. 8 stages of a systematic review
1. Formulating a review question
2. Defining inclusion and exclusion criteria
3. Locating studies through searching
4. Selecting studies for inclusion
5. Assessing the quality of studies
6. Extracting data
7. Analyzing and synthesizing the relevant studies
8. Presenting and interpreting results
Focus for today

6. Which database when?
Medicine: Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library (Systematic reviews & trials data)
Psychiatry: PsycINFO
Nursing/Allied Health: CINAHL, British Nursing Index,EMCARE
Management: HMIC (Healthcare Management Information Consortium)
Multidisciplinary: WOS (Web of Science)
Visit www.library.sgul.ac.uk and click ‘Databases A-Z’

7. Other sources
 Google scholar and other
targeted web searches
 Handsearching journals
and reference lists
 Contacting experts
 Trials databases
http://bit.ly/2xLi8T8
 Grey literature
 Conference proceedings
 Dissertations and theses
http://ethos.bl.uk

8. Step 1
Focus your research question and
keywords

9. Focus your question
I’m looking for information on diabetes- in particular education…
Is patient education effective in improving blood sugar control in
teenage diabetics?

10. Is patient education effective in improving blood
sugar control in teenage diabetics?
 Keywords for this search
1. Patient
Education
2. Blood sugar
3. Teenage
diabetics

11. Planning with PICO (S)
P Population, problem e.g. Teenage diabetics
I Intervention e.g. Patient education
C Comparison e.g no comparison
O Outcome(s) e.g. Improved blood sugar levels
S Study type e.g. Qualitative studies

12. Alternatives to PICO(S)
 Spider – Sample, Phenomena of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research
 Pestel - Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and
Legal Factors
 Spice – Setting, Population, Intervention, Comparison, Evaluation
 Eclips [management and service related issues] – Expectations, Client
Group, Location, Impact, Professionals Involved, Service

13. Activity
1.Think of your own focused question and write it down
(use PICO(S) if it helps)
2. Underline your keywords (2 or 3) from your question or
post them in the chat to share with others

14. Step 2
Find alternative keywords to widen
your search

15. Is patient education effective in improving blood
sugar control in teenage diabetics?
 Keywords for this search
1. Patient
Education
2. Blood sugar
3. Teenage
diabetics

16. Synonyms or alternative words
P Teenage, teenagers, adolescents
I Patient education, patient information, health
education
C No comparison
O Blood sugar, blood glucose, hypoglycemia,
hypoglycaemia, hyperglycemia, hyperglycaemia,
S Qualitative studies

17. Activity
1. Thinking of your own topic, could you identify alternative
keywords or phrases for each of your concepts? Share
some examples in the chat
2.If you are unsure, use our alternative keyword worked
example as a guide – linked in the chat

18. Step 3
Apply search techniques to your plan:
1. Truncation & Wildcards
2. Boolean searching- ANDs and ORs
3. Brackets
4.Proximity searching
5. Field searching
6. Subject heading searching

19. Search Techniques 1- Truncation and Wildcards
Truncation
 Apply an * to word stems...so you don’t miss any relevant article*
adolescen* = adolescence or adolescent or adolescents
Wildcards
 Replace zero or 1 characters with a ?
wom?n = woman or women
Tip! Check your
database provider’s
help pages for correct
characters

20. Search Techniques 2- Boolean ANDs and ORs
OR is More:
teenager* OR adolescent*
AND narrows and reduces your search:
“blood glucose level*” AND adolescent*
Tip! OR combines
similar terms
AND combines
your different
elements of your
search

21. Search Techniques 3- Brackets
 Use brackets to group together (similar or alternative) words or
phrases
(teenager* or adolescent*) and (blood sugar or blood glucose or
diabet*)

22. Search Techniques 4- Proximity searching 1
“Phrase searching”
 In some databases, enclose phrases in “speech marks” to find that
“particular phrase”
 This will focus the number of results you get
“blood glucose” or “blood sugar”

23. Search Techniques 4- Proximity searching 2
Proximity or Adjacency
 a clever adj3 (trick or skill)
adolescen* adj3 diabe*
Will locate adolescent (and its variants) within 2 words of diabetes
(and its variants)
Tip! Database
provider
specific
Adj(n)- Ovid
N(n)- Ebsco

24. Search Techniques 5- Field searching
You can specify where the database looks for your terms
• Abstract
• Title
• Title or abstract
• Any field
Tip! Check database
provider for any
field label
identifiers, eg, in
Ovid, field*.tw.
means look in the
titles and abstracts
for term field and its
variants

25. Activity Break
Apply the truncation and Boolean techniques to
keywords in your own search plan
Truncation = * to search on word stems
OR = More, alternative terms
AND = Combines different concepts together
The search planning templates on the LibGuide
might help

26. Demo and hands on
 Watch me demo my
PICOS plan in Ovid
Embase.
 Try your own search for 10
minutes then come back.
 Ask any questions in the
chat

27. Subject heading searching
 Standardised terms ​
 Assigned by expert indexers (not always)​
 Allows exploration of associated
(broader, narrower and related) terms in subject tree​
 Can help your search and avoid problems inherent in free text​
Combine your keywords and subject headings for each of your terms with OR
Tip! A
systematic
search will use
subject headings
as well as
keywords for
each term

28. Demo and hands on
 Watch me demo finding
and adding subject
headings in Ovid Embase
to my search strategy
 Try your own search for 10
minutes then come back.
 Ask any questions in the
chat

29. Activity Break
Try and find subject headings for at least one of
your search terms and add to your search with
appropriate Boolean (OR)
Does use of subject headings increase the
amounts of results you get?

30. Demo and hands on
 Watch me demo
combining my final
keyword and subject
heading searches together
with AND
 Try doing the same to your
own search
 Ask any questions in the
chat

31. Step 4
Filtering & limiting your
search results

32. Limiting or filtering results 1
 Demographics
 Age
 Gender​
 Language​
 Publication type​
 Publication date

33. Limiting or filtering results 2
 Database search filters
 Cochrane
http://handbook-51.cochrane.org/chapter_6/6_4_11_search_filters.htm
 SIGN
http://www.sign.ac.uk/search-filters.html
 The InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group Search Filter Resource
https://sites.google.com/a/york.ac.uk/issg-search-filters-resource/home

34. Step 5
Saving your search results
and strategy

35. Saving results & strategies & managing results
 Create personal account to save strategies to log & rerun
searches
 Use database functions to save and download records
 Records can be downloaded to citation management software
 Save down search strategies to document the search- PRISMA
Flow Diagram

36. Step 6
Getting hold of papers &
more help

37. Finding papers & getting more help
 SGUL Journals- Hunter or Journals A-Z
 NHS Ejournals A-Z
 OpenAccess journals
 Document supply services
 https://libguides.sgul.ac.uk/sysreviews
 liaison@sgul.ac.uk