Su Golder1, Yoon Loke. 1. Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. spg3@york.ac.uk
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The review evaluated studies of electronic database search strategies designed to retrieve adverse effects data for systematic reviews. METHODS: Studies of adverse effects were located in ten databases as well as by checking references, hand-searching, searching citations, and contacting experts. Two reviewers screened the retrieved records for potentially relevant papers. RESULTS: Five thousand three hundred thirteen citations were retrieved, yielding 19 studies designed to develop or evaluate adverse effect filters, of which 3 met the inclusion criteria. All 3 studies identified highly sensitive search strategies capable of retrieving over 95% of relevant records. However, 1 study did not evaluate precision, while the level of precision in the other 2 studies ranged from 0.8% to 2.8%. Methodological issues in these papers included the relatively small number of records, absence of a validation set of records for testing, and limited evaluation of precision. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate the difficulty of achieving highly sensitive searches for information on adverse effects with a reasonable level of precision. Researchers who intend to locate studies on adverse effects should allow for the amount of resources and time required to conduct a highly sensitive search.
OBJECTIVES: The review evaluated studies of electronic database search strategies designed to retrieve adverse effects data for systematic reviews. METHODS: Studies of adverse effects were located in ten databases as well as by checking references, hand-searching, searching citations, and contacting experts. Two reviewers screened the retrieved records for potentially relevant papers. RESULTS: Five thousand three hundred thirteen citations were retrieved, yielding 19 studies designed to develop or evaluate adverse effect filters, of which 3 met the inclusion criteria. All 3 studies identified highly sensitive search strategies capable of retrieving over 95% of relevant records. However, 1 study did not evaluate precision, while the level of precision in the other 2 studies ranged from 0.8% to 2.8%. Methodological issues in these papers included the relatively small number of records, absence of a validation set of records for testing, and limited evaluation of precision. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate the difficulty of achieving highly sensitive searches for information on adverse effects with a reasonable level of precision. Researchers who intend to locate studies on adverse effects should allow for the amount of resources and time required to conduct a highly sensitive search.
Authors: Susan Jordan; Marie Ellenor Gabe-Walters; Alan Watkins; Ioan Humphreys; Louise Newson; Sherrill Snelgrove; Michael S Dennis Journal: PLoS One Date: 2015-10-13 Impact factor: 3.240