Developing optimal search strategies for retrieving clinically relevant qualitative studies in EMBASE.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Information Science

Background:

• Qualitative research is vital for patient healthcare but scattered across journals, complicating literature searches.
• Existing large databases like EMBASE have limitations in comprehensively retrieving qualitative studies.
• Developing effective search strategies for qualitative research detection remains an underexplored area.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate optimal search strategies for identifying qualitative studies within the EMBASE database.
• To improve the electronic retrieval of qualitative research for the year 2000.

Main Methods:

• An analytic survey was conducted, comparing manual journal content analysis with EMBASE search results.
• Candidate search terms and their combinations were systematically tested.
• Performance metrics including sensitivity and specificity were calculated for various search strategies.

Main Results:

• Peak sensitivities of 94.2% and specificities of 99.7% were achieved with specific search strategies.
• Optimized search strategies combining terms demonstrated over 89% for both sensitivity and specificity.
• The study successfully identified high-performing search strategies for qualitative study retrieval in EMBASE.

Conclusions:

• Effective search strategies can significantly enhance the retrieval of qualitative research in large bibliographic databases.
• The developed strategies offer a valuable tool for researchers seeking qualitative health care studies in EMBASE.
• Further work on search strategy optimization can improve access to diverse research methodologies.