Literature reviews & literature searches

Literature Reviews &
Literature Searches
Taghreed Justinia Msc PhD
Asst. Professor, Department of Health Informatics
Asst. Director, Information & Communication Technology
KSAU-HS, NGHA
Tel. +966 2 6240000 ext 26217 / 26210
Email: JustiniaT@ngha.med.sa

In this session…
 Definition and understanding of a literature review
 Important steps in literature review writing
 Critical appraisal of journals, articles and websites
2Literature Reviews & Literature Searches

Literature Search
 The best way to find high quality information is to
carry out a literature search on one or more databases
and to download, copy or request relevant current
publications on the topic/s of interest.

What is a research literature
review?
 It is a systematic, explicit and reproducible method
for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the
existing body of completed and recorded work
produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners.
Fink, A. (2005). Conducting Research Literature Reviews. London: Sage.

Steps in
literature review writing
 Selecting the research questions
 Selecting the sources
 Choosing search terms
 Conducting the search
 Applying practical screening criteria
 Critically appraising the literature
 Journals & Articles
 Websites

Selecting the research
questions

Research questions influence
search results
Relevancy
Retrieval
(# of search
results)
Broad
Questions
Narrow
Questions
High =
lots of
articles
Low =
very few
articles
High = directly
relevant articles
Low = mostly
irrelevant articles

Possible research questions
Broad question:
What is the prevalence of bacterial meningitis?
Narrow question:
What costs are associated with hospitalization for bacterial
meningitis?
Very narrow question:
What strategies have been utilized in Saudi Arabia to reduce length
of stay for patients with bacterial meningitis?

Selecting Sources

Literature review data sources
 Online public bibliographic databases
 Commercial bibliographic databases
 Specialized bibliographic databases
 Manual or “hand searches” of references lists
 “Grey literature”
 Web reports
 Expert opinions

Bibliographic Databases
 Medicine
 PubMed (or Ovid MEDLINE), EMBASE, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO
 Multidisciplinary
 Scopus
 Web of Science
 Nursing and Allied Health
 CINAHL

Websites
 Associations, Organizations & Government
 World Health Organization (WHO)
 Health Canada
 Canadian Medical Association
 National Health Service (NHS)

“Grey Literature”
 Dissertations & Theses
 SCOPUS (conference proceedings)
 Web search engines

Choosing Search Terms

Break down the
research question
 Select your database
 Break down the research question into concepts
 Identify subject headings (descriptors) for each concept
 Identify text words for each concept
 Use a “target article” to help identify search terms
 Use a worksheet to keep track of your terms
1. Your database will determine your subject headings and
operators (i.e., truncation symbols)

Different databases have
different subject headings
 Select subject headings that are the closest match for your concept
 General descriptors: Anatomy
 More specific descriptors: Ankle
Database Subject Headings
Medline MeSH
EMBASE EMTREE
CINAHL CINAHL Headings
Cochrane Library MeSH
PsycINFO Thesaurus of Psychological Index
Terms
Scopus, Web of Science N/A

Search Strategy Worksheet
Search Strategy Worksheet_________________________________________________
Search statement: I am looking for articles about ___________________________________________________________________
After writing out the search statement, underline the key concepts. Decide how the concepts will be combined together using the
AND and OR Boolean operators. Concepts to be ANDed go across the grid and concepts to be ORed go down the grid.
Fill in the grid with the key concepts and possible synonyms for each concept.
AND AND AND AND
OR
OR
OR
OR
OR
OR
OR
Databases to search:___________________________________________________________________________________________
Limits to apply:_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Key Operators in OVID
Operator Command Example
* Find alternate endings to this
word
nurs* [will find nurse, nursing,
nurses]
.tw. Search for this term in the
Title and Abstract fields
anxiety.tw.
adj Search for one term within x
number of terms from another
patient adj3 anxiety [will find
patient within three words of
anxiety]
AND Find articles where both terms
appear
smoking AND cessation
OR Find articles where either
term appears
smoking OR tobacco

Conducting the Search

Conducing the Search
 Start with your first concept
 Search for the subject headings first
 Then search text words
 Combine these synonymous searches with OR using your
search history
 Repeat for your second, third, and subsequent concepts
 Finally, combine large search results set with AND
 Example MeSH search: hypertenstion AND toxicity

Concepts
Which concepts are contained in the question:
Does hand washing prevent MRSA in the ICU?
 Hand washing
 Prevention
 MRSA
 ICU

Getting the search results
Concept 1
SEARCH 1
SEARCH 2
SEARCH 3
SEARCH 4
SEARCH 5 = 1 OR 2 OR 3 OR 4
Concept 1
SEARCH 6
SEARCH 7
SEARCH 8
SEARCH 9
SEARCH 10 = 1 OR 2 OR 3 OR 4
SEARCH 11 = 5 AND 10 = RESULTS

Applying Practical
Screening Criteria

Screening Criteria Examples
 Date of publication
 only studies conducted between 2005 and 2010
 Participants or subjects
 only children 6 to 12 years of age
 Publication language
 only materials written in English or French
 Research design
 only clinical trials

Citation List
 Searching databases will result in a list of citations,
which include the information needed to locate the
articles in print journals and other sources

Critically Appraising
Journals & Articles

Be Critical
 Once you have obtained the papers most relevant to
your question you should consider a number of things
before using the results.
 This applies even when the publications are from peer
reviewed journals.

Publication Bias
 Negative results don’t (often) get published – If you
want to carry out a detailed or systematic review of a
subject area, you might consider trying to get hold of
unpublished studies.
 Reviewers may be biased against unconventional
versus conventional techniques (eg orthodox drug
versus alternative therapy).

Authorship
 Are the authors based at a well-established Centre of
Excellence?
 Are there any issues of sponsorship or competing
interests?

Journal Ranking &
Impact Factors
 Impact Factor is:
 A measure of the frequency with which the "average
article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year or
period
 The impact factor of a journal is linked to its
popularity and accessibility
 Journals with higher impact factors in a subject area
are generally more highly regarded

Abstract Quality
 Read the paper carefully; don’t rely on only the abstract
 Many abstracts in peer reviewed journals have errors
 Three common types of inaccuracies are:
 data inconsistent in abstract and body of the paper,
tables, and figures
 data or information in the abstract do not appear
elsewhere; and
 conclusions in the abstract not substantiated in the paper
itself

Critically Appraising
Websites

Be critical, be selective
 The peer review system for journal articles provides a
degree of quality control.
 However, anybody can put anything on the web (you
have to do your own critical appraisal).

What to consider
 Content
 consider intended audience, purpose of site, accuracy
 are the sources of information provided?
 Source; Consider
 author(s)
 is it current and up to date?
 depth/breadth of coverage
 bias – are there any conflicts of interest
 Structure; Consider
 graphics, presentation, ease of use, clarity

Don’t forget!
 Your subject librarian can always help you. Don’t
waste that valuable resource.
 Make an point to meet your medical/university
librarian to assist and advise you on your literature
searches and literature reviews.

Useful References
 Fink, A. (2005). Conducting Research Literature Reviews. London:
Sage.
 Greenhalgh, T. (2006). How to read a paper (3rd ed.). London: BMJ
Publishing Group.
 Sackett, D., Straus, S., & Richardson, W. (2000). Evidence-based
medicine (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.
 Wilson, P. (2002). How to find the good and avoid the bad or ugly.
A short guide to tools for rating quality of health information on
the internet. BMJ, 324, 598-602.

Useful Sites
 NHS Solutions for Public Health http://www.sph.nhs.uk/what-
we-do/public-health-workforce/resources
 CADTH. Grey Matters: a practical search tool for evidence-based
medicine - http://cadth.ca/en/resources/grey-matters
 Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews and Interventions -
http://www.cochrane-handbook.org/
 IOM (Institute of Medicine). Finding what works in health care:
standards for systematic reviews -
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2011/Finding-What-Works-in-Health-
Care-Standards-for-Systematic-Reviews.aspx

Questions?

Literature reviews & literature searches

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