Searching Comprehensively

Systematic Searching

During protocol development, you will have identified relevant databases, search terms, and studies. These will help you build the search strategy you will report in your methods section (the more detailed and transparent you are about this process, the better, so it helps to keep track).

1. Compile identified terms and databases
   • Keep key concepts separate from one another rather than searching in phrases
   • String together synonyms for each concept connected with the Boolean operator OR
     • i.e. (Population) Latinx OR Hispanic OR Mexican OR Chicano
     • (Problem/Issue) acculturative stress OR cultural assimilation OR marginalization OR discrimination
     • (Intervention) community engagement OR community involvement OR civic engagement
2. Add truncations and wildcards
   • Truncations and wildcards can help you enhance your search. For example, Latin* will search for latinx, latina, latino, and latin@
   • Truncations and wildcards can vary between databases, so find the Help link in your identified databases to ensure you are using the correct ones
3. Test your search in your identified databases
   • In the EBSCO platform you can search multiple databases together, but it is recommended that you only do this during the testing stage.
   • Focus first on the number of results. Is this what you expected? Is this more search results than you expected or less?
4. Tweak your search strategy based on what you find
   • Scan titles and abstracts in your search results to identify terms to include or exclude from your search strategy.
   • Try adding or removing quotation marks from phrases in your search strategy.
5. Test again, test a LOT
   • Don't get discouraged with this process, especially if you are a beginner. Testing your search strategy is good practice and can take a while with many iterations, but there's no real right or wrong answer. What's important is that you feel relatively confident that you are 
6. Adapt search strategies for different databases
   • Truncations and wildcards, and even boolean operators can vary between databases, so you'll want to adapt your search strategy accordingly.
7. Conduct final search
   • Conduct searches separately in each database.
   • Keep track of the date, exact strategy used, and number of search results for each database search. You'll want to report this later.

Once you have fully tested and edited your search strategy, and you are comfortable with the number and quality of search results it is returning, you will conduct the "final search." This doesn't mean that you won't do any searching after that, it just means that this is the search that you report on in the methods section of your paper. Be sure to document the full search strategy, it's translation for different databases, the date the search was conducted, and the total number of search results gathered from each database. These are all items that you will include in your methods section.

It's helpful to review the PRISMA-S extension for search reporting before you get started.