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Welcome to UNL Libraries's LibGuide to Searching Comprehensively!
This LibGuide is part of the Advanced Reviews series, and contains information and resources for your comprehensive search.
1. Search Comprehensively This page will get you started by describing key terms in a comprehensive search: sensitivity vs specificity, exploratory searching, systematic searching, and supplementary searching |
This page provides guidance on writing a search strategy, and provides examples and further resources |
3. Translate Search Strategies This page provides guidance on translating your search strategy syntax from one database to another, and provides examples and further resources |
This page defines gray literature, and provides guidance on searching various sources for your comprehensive search |
Comprehensive searching occurs in 3 phases, exploratory, systematic, and supplementary. While exploratory and systematic have a defined time frame within the advanced review process, supplementary searching occurs throughout. See the following pages for more on the three phases.
Also referred to as recall and precision by White:
"Precision and recall tend to vary inversely. If one seeks high recall-complete or comprehensive searches--one must be prepared to retrieve many irrelevant documents, thereby degrading precision. Conversely, retrievals can be made highly precise, so as to cut down on false positives, but at the cost of missing many relevant documents scattered through the literature (false negatives), thereby degrading recall... The research synthesists are distinctive in wanting (or at least accepting the need for) high recall." (43)
White, H.D. (1994). Scientific communication and literature retrieval. In H. M. Cooper & L. V. Hedges (Eds). The Handbook of research synthesis. Russell Sage Foundation.
Created by Elle Covington (they/them), Assistant Professor Research Specialist Librarian, and Gabe Bruguier, Assistant Professor Research Specialist Librarian, UNL Libraries, originally published 10/11/2024.