? ? The projects in this proposal are part of a series of studies seeking ways to develop and harness search strategies (""""""""hedges"""""""") that will improve retrieval of clinically relevant and scientifically sound reports from large, general purpose, biomedical research bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE. 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 about managing health care problems to retrieve all relevant citations; 3) to provide resources for librarians to help clinicians construct their own searches; and 4) to provide input to bibliographic database producers about indexing processes and organization of databases. Our long-term objective is to harness the most clinically relevant content of electronic bibliographic databases so that their influence on clinical practice can be enhanced. We believe that improved search strategies are urgently needed given the inherent problems of indexing and retrieval in large databases, and the widespread and rapidly increasing direct use of these databases by clinicians, researchers, educators, administrators, lawyers, journalists, patients, and the general public, whose interests are primarily directed towards a small subset of the literature that is of most relevance to the cause, course, diagnosis, costs, prevention, and treatment of health care problems. The questions to be addressed in this proposal are related to defining journal subsets which may lead to better precision when searching in MEDLINE; investigating the accuracy and consistency of MEDLINE indexing; determining if retrieval is enhanced when searching in journal subsets that publish structured abstracts; assessing the completeness of reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy since the STARD initiative and determining if this has had an impact on indexing; determining the impact on diagnostic reviews when using search filters that optimize different searching characteristics (e.g., sensitivity); and evaluating the usefulness of the clinical hedges in the intended users group, clinicians. ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01LM006866-06
Application #
7123457
Study Section
Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee (BLR)
Program Officer
Sim, Hua-Chuan
Project Start
2000-03-13
Project End
2008-09-29
Budget Start
2006-09-30
Budget End
2007-09-29
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$37,170
Indirect Cost
Name
Mcmaster University
Department
Type
DUNS #
207510108
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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