Techniques for identifying cross-disciplinary and 'hard-to-detect' evidence for systematic review
Techniques for identifying cross-disciplinary and 'hard-to-detect' evidence for systematic review
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DOI：
10.1002/jrsm.1094
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发表时间：
2014-03-01
影响因子：
9.8
通讯作者：
Thomas, James
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
O'Mara-Eves, Alison;Brunton, Ginny;Thomas, James
在我们自己的复杂审查的必要性的推动下，我们开发了替代的系统方法来确定相关证据，其中关键概念通常不是主要研究目标的焦点，并且可以跨多个学科找到--即难以发现的证据。具体地说，我们试图确定社区参与旨在减少健康不平等的公共卫生干预措施的证据。我们最初的搜索策略使用文本挖掘来识别‘社区参与’这一概念的同义词。我们对有关公共卫生干预的综述进行了系统的搜索，并辅之以对试验数据库的搜索。然后，我们使用综述的证据表中的信息来收集关于纳入的研究的更多信息，而不是主要研究本身的标题或摘要中明显显示的信息。在全文筛选后，我们确定了319项在综述中引用的主要研究。在这篇文章中，我们回顾了所采取的方法的挑战和好处。我们估计，超过四分之一的已确定研究将被典型的搜索和筛选方法遗漏。这一确定策略非常有效，可用于审查广泛的研究问题，或在关键概念不太可能成为主要研究重点的情况下进行审查。版权所有(C)2013 John Wiley&Sons，Ltd.
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. Copyright (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.