Literature Searching Practical Guide

Searching the Literature - Practical Guide

• Literature searching is a process to find relevant studies
• Define your search question, turning it into a research strategy
• Key steps include understanding literature searching, defining the question, creating a research strategy
• Recognizing how to develop and refine a search strategy is essential
• Knowing how to save searches is a practical skill

Contents and Learning Objectives (ILOs)

• Understanding literature searching: What is it and why is it important
• Defining your search question: Clearly posing the research question is crucial
• Turning search question into strategy: Turning the question into specific search terms
• Identifying where to search: Locating appropriate databases and resources
• Developing search strategies: Creating a tailored approach to finding relevant information
• Refining your search: Ensuring accuracy and relevance of results
• Saving your search: Storing the search to retrieve it later

Steps of Finding Research Papers

• Step 1: Understand literature searching
• Step 2: Define your search question
• Step 3: Turn question into a research strategy
• Step 4: Decide where to search
• Step 5: Develop a search strategy
• Step 6: Refine your search
• Step 7: Save your search

Literature Search vs. Literature Review and Other Terms

• Literature search: Finding studies, often for preliminary work,
• Literature review: Reviewing identified studies.
• Systematic review: A thorough look at all relevant studies (published and unpublished) to summarise findings.
• Meta-analysis: Combining similar studies to come to an overall result

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Resources

• Primary: Original research by authors
• Secondary: Summarizes/synthesizes primary literature (e.g., systematic reviews, meta-analyses)
• Tertiary: Condensed versions of primary/secondary sources (e.g., textbooks, handbooks)

Grey Literature

• Scholarly work not commercially published or peer-reviewed
• Includes conference proceedings, theses, government documents, fact sheets and bulletins

Defining Your Search Question

• Form a search question before starting, including broad topic, refining to specific interests and formulating as a question
• Example: "In patients with eating disorders, how effective is cognitive behavioural therapy in improving self-esteem?"

Turning Search Question into a Research Strategy

• Identify main concepts in questions (e.g., "eating disorders," "cognitive behavioural therapy," "self-esteem")
• Use keywords and phrases to express concepts
• Have framework (e.g., PICO) - patient/population, intervention, comparison, outcome

Decide Where to Search

• Wide variety of search platforms and databases available
• Some are open-access (viewable/downloadable without subscription)
• Others require subscriptions or library fees for full text access

Develop a Search Strategy

• Account for possible search terms, keywords, phrases, and subject headings
• Adapt strategies for each database
• May need multiple strategies if research covers many areas

Search Strategy Techniques

• Use accurate keywords, synonyms, plurals, and singular variations
• Use limiters/filters to narrow results (e.g. type of article, language, full text articles only)
• Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine terms (AND - searches for both terms, OR - searches for either term or both, NOT - excludes one term from results)
• Utilize truncated and wildcard searching for variations of terms

Developing a Search Strategy (continued)

• Utilize quotation marks for exact phrases
• Consider Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for structured searching (hierarchical system for indexing).