Government Social Research
Last Updated: 16/9/2008
In order to search for and so include, relevant studies in a systematic review, you need to develop a ‘search strategy’. This specifies the methods for conducting the search. REA search strategies are: principled; planned; rigorous, taken with care and checked; explicitly reported; and grounded in the research question.
This stage of the project will benefit from the help of a librarian or information specialist because they can advise on devising a search strategy. They should be able to provide guidance on defining search terms that will help balance sensitivity (the amount of literature that is found) and specificity (the amount of relevant versus non-relevant literature found).
The search strategy should include the following four elements. Under each element is an example of how the strategy was used by the Home Office to carry out an REA on evidence based approaches to gang violence.
The Home Office defined the inclusion criteria as follows.
The Home Office used the following databases.
The detail of the search terms that the Home Office used in their REA on evidence based approaches to gang violence is available on pages 40-41 of the final report (PDF).
This stage of the project is one of the most important to involve an information specialist or librarian who will be able to work with you to define the search terms in relation to your question and conceptual framework. They can also advise on important practical considerations for writing search strategies, such as, the use of ‘Ors’ and ‘Ands’, and special characters such as ‘*’. The Toolkit provides some guidance on this as well in ‘Searching help’.