A systematic approach to searching:

an efficient and complete method

to develop literature searches

Members of Group 9 :

1. Afifah Novintia (06011381924040)

2. Ilhan Haqqan Khafif (06011381924058)
3. Keysha Aliny Shabinanuri (06011382025068)
CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY
1. Determine a clear and
focused question
“What effect does social media have
on people’s mind?”
“what effect does daily use of
instagram have on the attention span
of under 20s?”
2. Describe the articles that
can answer the question
A g o o d s t a r t i n g p o i n t fo r a s e a r c h i s
hypothesizing what the research that can
answer the question would look like.
These hypothetical (when possible, combined
with known) articles can be used as guidance
for constructing the search strategy.
 CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY
3. Decide which key concepts
address the different
elements of the question
Key concepts are the to pics o r
components that the desired articles
should address, such as diseases or
conditions, actions, substances, settings,
domains (e.g., therapy, diagnosis,
etiology), or study types.
Example :
PICO search model helps to identify the Patient, Intervention,
Comparison and Outcome concepts within your research
question.
• Patient / Population: Who is your patient? (age, sex, primary
problem, health status)
• Intervention: What do you plan on doing for the patient?
(diagnostic test, medication, procedure)
• Comparison: What alternative are you considering? (another
test, medication or procedure)
• Outcome: What do wish to accomplish? (accurate diagnosis,
relieve or improve symptoms, maintain function)
 CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY
4. Decide which elements should
be used for the best results
If articles can answer the question but lack a
certain element in their titles, abstracts, or
keywords, that element is unimportant to the
question. An element can also be unimportant
because of expected bias or an overlap with
another element.
Searching specifically for the element of duration.
“The effectiveness of the Lichtenstein therapy for
inguinal hernias.”
“The effectiveness of the Lichtenstein therapy.”
5. Choose an appropriate
database and interface to start with
• Search several specialist databases using the ones
that are most relevant to your topic.
• Look at the description of the database.
• Move to another database if you don’t get many
results
Example :
Medline , ERIC, Scopus, and Compendex
 CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY

Documenting the search help us to :

1) Keep track of what we’ve done so that we don’t repeat
6. Document the search
process in a text documen
unproductive searches
2) Reuse successful search strategies for future papers
3) Help use to describe our search process for manuscripts
4) Justify your search process
 7. Identify appropriate index terms in
the thesaurus ofthe first database

Searches should be started by indentifying appropriate thesaurus terms for the desired elements. Several factors
can complicate the identification of thesaurus terms. Sometimes, one thesaurus terms is found that exactly
describes a specific element. In contrast, specially in more general elements, multiple thesaurus terms can be
found to describe one element.
In developing searching strategies, keywords are the terms that are used in an article or abstract. In indexed
databases, no matter what term(s) an author uses, there will be one subject heading applied for that topic.
Example :
- Keywords : ct scan / x-ray scan / cine ct / ct x ray
- PubMed MeSH (thesaurus/subject) term : Tomography, X-ray

Indexed / Thesaurus / Controlled Vocabulary

Indexed databases generally provide a link to their thesaurus :
- PubMed : Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
- PsycINFO : Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms
- Academic OneFile (Gale) : Subject Guide Search
 CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY

Most thesauri offer a list of synonyms on their term details

8. Identify synonyms in the page. To create a sensitive search strategy for SRs, these
thesaurus
terms need to be searched as free-text keywords in the title
and abstract fields, in addition to searching their associated
thesaurus terms.
 CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY
9. Add variations in search terms
(e.g., truncation, spelling
differences, abbreviations,
opposites)
1) Abbreviations
OA --> Osteoarthritis
DNA --> Deoxyribonucleic acid
HSV --> Herpes simplex virus
2) Truncation
Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*) To use truncation,
enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with
an *. Use an asterisk (*) as a "wildcard" to replace a character
anywhere in a word, except the first character.
For example :
type adoles* to find the words adolescent, adolescents or
adolescence.
3) Opposite
“disease recurrence” --> “disease free”
“flood causes” --> “flood prevention”
 CREATING A SYSTEMATIC SEARCH STRATEGY
9. Add variations in search terms
(e.g., truncation, spelling
differences, abbreviations,
opposites)
1) Abbreviations
OA --> Osteoarthritis
DNA --> Deoxyribonucleic acid
HSV --> Herpes simplex virus
2) Truncation
Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*) To use truncation,
enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with
an *. Use an asterisk (*) as a "wildcard" to replace a character
anywhere in a word, except the first character.
For example :
type adoles* to find the words adolescent, adolescents or
adolescence.
3) Opposite
“disease recurrence” --> “disease free”
“flood causes” --> “flood prevention”
Thank you