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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Hidden gems
— systematically searching electronic databases for research publications for social work and social care | | Author(s) | Brian J Taylor, Martin Dempster, Michael Donnelly |
| Journal title | British Journal of Social Work, vol 33, no 4, June 2003 |
| Pages | pp 423-440 |
| Keywords | Services ; Community care ; Research Reviews ; Information services ; Information technology ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | The authors describe and evaluate a method of identifying relevant articles as part of a systematic review of research evidence. They use decision making about institutional and home care services for older people as an example. Four databases (Social Science Citation Index, Medline, CINAHL and Caredata) which abstract publications relevant to health and social services were searched systematically to identify relevant research studies. Searches were compared in terms of sensitivity, precision, overlap between databases and inter-rater reliability. The search retrieved 525 articles, of which 276 were relevant. The four databases retrieved 55%, 41%, 19% and 1% of the relevant articles respectively, achieving these sensitivities with precision levels of 54%, 48%, 84% and 94%. The databases retrieved 116, 73, 24 and 15 unique relevant articles respectively, showing the need to use a range of databases. A general approach to creating a search to retrieve relevant research has been developed. The development of an international, indexed database dedicated to literature relevant to social services is a priority to enable progress in evidence-based policy and practice in social work. Editors and researchers should consider using structured abstracts in order to improve the retrieval and dissemination of research. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-030703201 A |
| Classmark | I: PA: 3A:6KC: UV: UVB: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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