Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies



Shaw, Rachel L, Booth, Andrew, Sutton, Alex J, Miller, Tina, Smith, Jonathan A, Young, Bridget, Jones, David R and Dixon-Woods, Mary
(2004) Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 4 (1). 5-.

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Abstract

Background: Qualitative research makes an important contribution to our understanding of health and healthcare. However, qualitative evidence can be difficult to search for and identify, and the effectiveness of different types of search strategies is unknown. Methods: Three search strategies for qualitative research in the example area of support for breast-feeding were evaluated using six electronic bibliographic databases. The strategies were based on using thesaurus terms, free-text terms and broad-based terms. These strategies were combined with recognised search terms for support for breast-feeding previously used in a Cochrane review. For each strategy, we evaluated the recall (potentially relevant records found) and precision (actually relevant records found). Results: A total yield of 7420 potentially relevant records was retrieved by the three strategies combined. Of these, 262 were judged relevant. Using one strategy alone would miss relevant records. The broad-based strategy had the highest recall and the thesaurus strategy the highest precision. Precision was generally poor: 96% of records initially identified as potentially relevant were deemed irrelevant. Searching for qualitative research involves trade-offs between recall and precision. Conclusions: These findings confirm that strategies that attempt to maximise the number of potentially relevant records found are likely to result in a large number of false positives. The findings also suggest that a range of search terms is required to optimise searching for qualitative evidence. This underlines the problems of current methods for indexing qualitative research in bibliographic databases and indicates where improvements need to be made.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Published: 16 March 2004. 5 pages (page numbers not for citation purposes).
Uncontrolled Keywords: health, healthcare, qualitative evidence, breast-feeding, electronic bibliographic databases, thesaurus terms, free-text terms, broad-based terms
Subjects: ?? R1 ??
Divisions: Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 07 Jul 2008 09:15
Last Modified: 14 Mar 2024 20:15
DOI: 10.1186/1471-2288-4-5
Publisher's Statement : © 2004 Shaw et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL. This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/4/5
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URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/782