The projects in this proposal are part of a series of investigations seeking ways to develop search strategies that will improve retrieval of clinically relevant and scientifically sound study reports from large bibliographic databases including MEDLINE, Embase, PsycLIT and/or CINAHL. The purpose of the search strategies is 1) to assist health care providers to do their own searches; 2) to help reviewers of published evidence concerning health care interventions to retrieve all relevant citations; 3) to provide resources for librarians to help health care providers to construct their own searches; and 4) to provide input to the database producers on their indexing processes. The proposed projects involve perfecting ways to harness these electronic databases for clinical purposes so the effect on clinical practice can be eventually tested. In our previous research using MEDLINE, we documented the retrieval performance of over 60,000 """"""""methodologic hedges"""""""", that is, search strategies designed to detect applied clinical research studies that meet basic scientific standards for study of the etiology, prognosis, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of health care problems. To extend this research the questions to be addressed in this investigation are: 1. What are the operating characteristics, in 1999 files of MEDLINE, Embase, PsycLIT, and CINAHL, of methodologic terms that define studies of most importance, in terms of both content and quality, to clinical questions about the cause, course, diagnosis, prevention or therapy, or qualitative aspects of human disorders?; 2. Can empirical search strategies (""""""""hedges"""""""") be created that combine terms to optimize the yield from the above noted electronic databases and topics? 3. How do the databases compare in terms of their retrieval performance?; 4. How well do the methodologic search strategies derived in our previous research perform in more recent MEDLINE files when using the same journal, subset, i.e., how well do the search strategies derived in the 1986 and 1991 MEDLINE databases perform when using citations published in 1999?; 5. How do the search strategies developed in this project compare with those published by other groups? To evaluate the search strategies, index terms and textwords related to research design features will be treated as diagnostic tests and a manual review of the literature will be treated as the gold standard . Articles will be defined as having relevant content and meeting basic methodologic criteria for clinical practice by the manual review. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and precision of the search strategies will be determined in each of the 4 electronic databases.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01LM006866-02
Application #
6391282
Study Section
Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee (BLR)
Program Officer
Sim, Hua-Chuan
Project Start
2000-03-13
Project End
2002-03-31
Budget Start
2001-04-01
Budget End
2002-03-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2001
Total Cost
$97,658
Indirect Cost
Name
Mcmaster University
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Hamilton
State
ON
Country
Canada
Zip Code
L8 3-Z5
Baier, L A; Wilczynski, N L; Haynes, R B (2010) Tackling the growth of the obesity literature: obesity evidence spreads across many journals. Int J Obes (Lond) 34:1526-30
Kastner, Monika; Wilczynski, Nancy L; McKibbon, Ann K et al. (2009) Diagnostic test systematic reviews: bibliographic search filters (""Clinical Queries"") for diagnostic accuracy studies perform well. J Clin Epidemiol 62:974-81
Eady, Angela May; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian (2008) PsycINFO search strategies identified methodologically sound therapy studies and review articles for use by clinicians and researchers. J Clin Epidemiol 61:34-40
Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian (2007) Response to Corrao et al.: Improving efficacy of PubMed clinical queries for retrieving scientifically strong studies on treatment. J Am Med Inform Assoc 14:247-8
Wong, Sharon S-L; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian (2006) Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound treatment studies in EMBASE. J Med Libr Assoc 94:41-7
Kastner, Monika; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Walker-Dilks, Cindy et al. (2006) Age-specific search strategies for Medline. J Med Internet Res 8:e25
Wong, Sharon S-L; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian (2006) Comparison of top-performing search strategies for detecting clinically sound treatment studies and systematic reviews in MEDLINE and EMBASE. J Med Libr Assoc 94:451-5
Wong, Sharon S L; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian (2006) Optimal CINAHL search strategies for identifying therapy studies and review articles. J Nurs Scholarsh 38:194-9
Montori, Victor M; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Morgan, Douglas et al. (2005) Optimal search strategies for retrieving systematic reviews from Medline: analytical survey. BMJ 330:68
Haynes, R Brian; McKibbon, K Ann; Wilczynski, Nancy L et al. (2005) Optimal search strategies for retrieving scientifically strong studies of treatment from Medline: analytical survey. BMJ 330:1179

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