Literature searching and finding evidence

Databases let you choose where to search for your terms, giving your search more focus.

The main fields are title, abstract and all fields/all text.

• The title option will only retrieve results where your search terms appear in the title of a document
• The abstract option is generally recommended: it will retrieve results where your search terms appear in the abstract (summary)
• The all fields/all text option will perform a broad search, retrieving results where your search terms appear anywhere within the text.

There may be times when you change the field you are searching in to widen or narrow your search.

Field searching is available via the Advanced Search in EBSCOhost and the Multi Field Search in Ovid.

If you perform a search for one concept at a time from your PICO you can add all the terms for that concept and combine them using the OR operator e.g.

Adding the * (asterisk symbol) at the end of a word stem will find variants of that word. It is particularly useful for retrieving both the singular and the plural forms of a word in the same search, e.g.:

• If you enter the term children into a database you will only retrieve results where that exact term appears
• If you enter child* you will find child, children or childhood
• Truncation therefore expands the number of results you find.

# Truncation is a useful technique but be careful when using it. For example truncating the term family (famil*) will find both the terms family and families BUT ALSO terms such as familiar which are irrelevant and would lead to lots of irrelevant results.

In this case it would be best to enter the terms like this: family OR families.

In EBSCOhost:

•  Use the # for alternate spellings e.g. p#ediatric
•  Use the ? for unknown characters e.g. wom?n

•  Use the ? for alternate spellings e.g. p?ediatric
•  Use the # for unknown characters e.g. wom#n

Truncation and the Wildcards can also be combined in most databases, e.g.:

This can be used for search terms which will be relevant even if they appear in a different order, e.g.:

To do this you need to place a proximity operator in between your terms. The operators differ depending upon which database/platform you are using:

• EBSCOhost = N
• Ovid Online = adj    

A small number should be placed after the operator to select how far apart you are happy for your terms to appear within a document, e.g.:

• health N5 promotion

this will retrieve any studies where the terms health and promotion appear within 5 words of each other, in any order.

In most databases, typing a phrase such as National Health Service or Parkinsons Disease into the database will search for each individual keyword with the AND operator placed between them, e.g.:

You will find the phrase but also results where the terms appear separately, potentially leaving you with irrelevant results.

If you want to restrict your search to only retrieve results containing the exact phrase, place speech marks "  " around your terms, e.g.:

You do not need to do this when searching in Ovid as this tool does not automatically place AND between your terms.   

You can use more than one tool/techniques at the same time, e.g.:

Databases provide options allowing you to limit your search results including by:

• age group
• publication date
• study type
• publication type
• language.

These can be useful when applying your inclusion and exclusion criteria.