Dataset Information

Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Qualitative research makes an important contribution to our understanding of health and healthcare. However, qualitative evidence can be difficult to search for and identify, and the effectiveness of different types of search strategies is unknown.

Methods

Three search strategies for qualitative research in the example area of support for breast-feeding were evaluated using six electronic bibliographic databases. The strategies were based on using thesaurus terms, free-text terms and broad-based terms. These strategies were combined with recognised search terms for support for breast-feeding previously used in a Cochrane review. For each strategy, we evaluated the recall (potentially relevant records found) and precision (actually relevant records found).

Results

A total yield of 7420 potentially relevant records was retrieved by the three strategies combined. Of these, 262 were judged relevant. Using one strategy alone would miss relevant records. The broad-based strategy had the highest recall and the thesaurus strategy the highest precision. Precision was generally poor: 96% of records initially identified as potentially relevant were deemed irrelevant. Searching for qualitative research involves trade-offs between recall and precision.

Conclusions

These findings confirm that strategies that attempt to maximise the number of potentially relevant records found are likely to result in a large number of false positives. The findings also suggest that a range of search terms is required to optimise searching for qualitative evidence. This underlines the problems of current methods for indexing qualitative research in bibliographic databases and indicates where improvements need to be made.

SUBMITTER: Shaw RL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC385230 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies.

Shaw Rachel L RL Booth Andrew A Sutton Alex J AJ Miller Tina T Smith Jonathan A JA Young Bridget B Jones David R DR Dixon-Woods Mary M

BMC medical research methodology 20040316

<h4>Background</h4>Qualitative research makes an important contribution to our understanding of health and healthcare. However, qualitative evidence can be difficult to search for and identify, and the effectiveness of different types of search strategies is unknown.<h4>Methods</h4>Three search strategies for qualitative research in the example area of support for breast-feeding were evaluated using six electronic bibliographic databases. The strategies were based on using thesaurus terms, free- ...[more]

PMID: 15070427

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Project description:Open research data practices are a relatively new, thus still evolving part of scientific work, and their usage varies strongly within different scientific domains. In the literature, the investigation of open research data practices covers the whole range of big empirical studies covering multiple scientific domains to smaller, in depth studies analysing a single field of research. Despite the richness of literature on this topic, there is still a lack of knowledge on the (open) research data awareness and practices in materials science and engineering. While most current studies focus only on some aspects of open research data practices, we aim for a comprehensive understanding of all practices with respect to the considered scientific domain. Hence this study aims at 1) drawing the whole picture of search, reuse and sharing of research data 2) while focusing on materials science and engineering. The chosen approach allows to explore the connections between different aspects of open research data practices, e.g. between data sharing and data search. In depth interviews with 13 researchers in this field were conducted, transcribed verbatim, coded and analysed using content analysis. The main findings characterised research data in materials science and engineering as extremely diverse, often generated for a very specific research focus and needing a precise description of the data and the complete generation process for possible reuse. Results on research data search and reuse showed that the interviewees intended to reuse data but were mostly unfamiliar with (yet interested in) modern methods as dataset search engines, data journals or searching public repositories. Current research data sharing is not open, but bilaterally and usually encouraged by supervisors or employers. Project funding does affect data sharing in two ways: some researchers argue to share their data openly due to their funding agency's policy, while others face legal restrictions for sharing as their projects are partly funded by industry. The time needed for a precise description of the data and their generation process is named as biggest obstacle for data sharing. From these findings, a precise set of actions is derived suitable to support Open Data, involving training for researchers and introducing rewards for data sharing on the level of universities and funding bodies.

Dataset Information

Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies.

Similar Datasets

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