Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The Institute for Work& Health (IWH) initiated a four-year pilot project to conduct reviews on the effectiveness of interventions to prevent workplace injury, illness or disability. As part of the pilot the IWH has undertaken an examination of the methods of searching for and reviewing the prevention literature. One method of evaluating our searches is to analyze where studies come from to improve future search strategies and reviews.
Objectives: To determine which bibliographic databases yielded the highest number of included studies in the area of occupational health and safety reviews and add to the research on health care review methodology.
Methods: A retrospective analysis was done across 14 reviews, spanning a six year time interval, to identify which bibliographic resources yielded relevant studies for each review. In addition we will conduct a sensitivity and specificity analysis of our searches.
Results: Preliminary results, based upon 9 reviews, indicate that those databases that typically yield the highernumbers of included studies in clinical reviews i.e. Medline and Embase, also yielded similar proportions in the occupational health and safety literature. Not surprisingly the results across 12 somewhat diverse bibliographic databases indicate the importance of searching multiple databases. No single database yielded all of the relevant studies. Data will be presented for each source and for individual reviews in order to determine the sensitivity and specificity of each. This analysis will represent over 100,000 studies from 12 different bibliographic databases.
Conclusions: Our analyses will lead to more sensitive and specific search strategies in the area of occupational health and safety. To conduct a comprehensive systematic review on the effectiveness of interventions to prevent workplace injury, illness or disability it is important to include multiple databases. However, to capture relevant prevention studies it is necessary to screen many irrelevantstudies.
Objectives: To determine which bibliographic databases yielded the highest number of included studies in the area of occupational health and safety reviews and add to the research on health care review methodology.
Methods: A retrospective analysis was done across 14 reviews, spanning a six year time interval, to identify which bibliographic resources yielded relevant studies for each review. In addition we will conduct a sensitivity and specificity analysis of our searches.
Results: Preliminary results, based upon 9 reviews, indicate that those databases that typically yield the highernumbers of included studies in clinical reviews i.e. Medline and Embase, also yielded similar proportions in the occupational health and safety literature. Not surprisingly the results across 12 somewhat diverse bibliographic databases indicate the importance of searching multiple databases. No single database yielded all of the relevant studies. Data will be presented for each source and for individual reviews in order to determine the sensitivity and specificity of each. This analysis will represent over 100,000 studies from 12 different bibliographic databases.
Conclusions: Our analyses will lead to more sensitive and specific search strategies in the area of occupational health and safety. To conduct a comprehensive systematic review on the effectiveness of interventions to prevent workplace injury, illness or disability it is important to include multiple databases. However, to capture relevant prevention studies it is necessary to screen many irrelevantstudies.