Practitioner's Guide to Using Research for Evidence-Informed Practice. Allen Rubin
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your search term is so narrow that you get too few (or perhaps no) useful references, you should restart your search with a broader term – one less and, perhaps. Another way to broaden your search is by using the connecting word or. For example, if you are searching for studies on the treatment of trauma symptoms among children exposed to domestic violence, and your search term is treatment outcome and children and domestic violence, you might get more references to children who witness domestic violence and not get some useful ones on children who are themselves abused by a perpetrating family member. To broaden your search to pick up more of the latter type of useful references, you could use the search term treatment outcome and children and domestic violence or child abuse. In some cases, you may want to add the term not to specifically limit your search. For example, you may be searching for studies related to adult attention deficit disorder, but find that you are overwhelmed with studies of children. Your search might include the term: attention deficit disorder not child. The search terms and, or, and not are called Boolean operators, and all search engines include these operators to guide searches.
Although many electronic databases have elements in common, such as Boolean operators, each of them has its own quirks. For example, when you do not specify one or the other between terms, some search engines assume that the connecting word is and, while others assume that the connecting word is or. Some search engines allow for a smaller number of search terms than others. In general, it's well worth your time to look at the help section of the database that you are using to learn how to use each engine to its fullest potential and save yourself some time.
The feature titled “An Internet Search Using Google Scholar and PsycINFO” illustrates how you might have to play around with a variety of search terms to find what you need and feel confident that you haven't missed something relevant and valuable. There is no one simple way to conduct your search, so you might ask, “Is it really worth the time and effort?” Well, what if you were the client in great distress and hoping that the practitioner treating you cared enough to make every effort to provide you with the treatment that had the best chance of success? What would your answer be?
2.2.3 An Internet Search Using Google Scholar and PsycINFO
Several decades ago, in preparing to give a lecture on the EIP process, Allen Rubin decided to conduct an Internet search pertaining to a child he once treated. He conducted this search before gaining more expertise on using Internet bibliographic databases, so his experience might resemble what you encounter when you start using these resources. His EIP question was as follows:
What interventions have the best empirical support for treating the trauma symptoms of a six-year-old African American boy who witnessed domestic violence?
He conducted this search in several phases. Not wanting to miss any kinds of studies bearing on his question, he began by using Google Scholar and entered his entire EIP question as the search term. (Actually, Google Scholar provides an advanced search option that would have allowed him to just enter certain words like interventions and trauma and domestic violence. The screen for that option is displayed in Figure 2.1.)
Ten links came up, but only four of them seemed like they might be even remotely relevant to his EIP question. One turned out to be an article on assessment and intervention with parents to stabilize children who have witnessed violence. It did not report a specific evaluation of a particular intervention. Another reviewed in very broad terms mental health treatments for children who are refugees. A third reported a study of the perspectives of battered mothers on the impact of domestic violence on urban preschool children, but did not evaluate an intervention for the children. The fourth was a book chapter that argued that the gender of the perpetrator and the victim are related to aggression during childhood.
FIGURE 2.1 Screen for advanced search option in google scholar.
So far, not so good! So he tried the search term: effective interventions with traumatized children (again using Google Scholar, he really didn't need to include the word with in his search term). He found hundreds of abstracts, but only eight addressed treatment effects. Not fully satisfied with the results of that search, he tried again with a different search term: effective interventions with children who witness domestic violence. Still using Google Scholar, again he found hundreds of abstracts, most of which did not address treatment effects, and only two that were not already found in the previous search.
Next, he went to the PsycINFO professional literature database to which he had access through the university where he worked. Many local libraries are now making PsycINFO and other related databases available at no cost to the public. These databases can be accessed remotely from your office or home free of charge.
PsycINFO provides a drop-down menu in between the search terms that includes and/or/not. It also includes a methodology search filter where you can select the types of studies you're looking for, such as an empirical study, treatment outcome study, and so on. You might want to enter the methodology search filter that best fits your research question first, and then work your way down to other types of research designs depending on what you find or don't find. (Chapter 3 discusses what types of research designs tend to go best with different types of EIP questions.)
Wanting to start with a very broad search before attempting to narrow it down, Rubin used the keywords: treatment and traumatized children. Alternatively, he could have used filters to narrow things down regarding research designs or his client's characteristics. When you conduct a search, it might be best to try it both ways. Then you can get a sense of what kinds of evidence you'll find using either approach. In his broad search on PsycINFO, however, he found only four references that seemed to be relevant to his EIP question.
Consequently, he returned to Google Scholar to see what would happen if in addition to the main search term, effective interventions with children who witness domestic violence, he added the term experimental design in the next box. In other words, he searched for links to sources that had all of the words effective interventions with children who witness domestic violence anywhere in the reference and with the exact phrase experimental design anywhere in the reference. This time, 153 references appeared. Thus, by adding the filter term experimental design, he came up with a more manageable list of articles. The vast majority of them, however, were still not adequately relevant to his EIP question. For example, the irrelevant ones addressed things like the prevention of violence among adult perpetrators, the treatment of battered women, dating violence among older children, and so on. Moreover, by stipulating that he was interested only in studies employing experimental designs, he was filtering out studies using other designs that might have been more relevant to his EIP question and the particular client characteristics in it.
Finally, he repeated the last step, but this time entering the words battered women in the box labeled without the words. (See Figure 2.1 for a display of the window for the advanced search option in Google Scholar.) Doing so, however, cut the number of references to only 19, and none of them addressed empirical support for the effectiveness of interventions germane to his client.
So, what lessons can be drawn from his various searches? One is that there is no pat answer – no panacea – for simplifying your Internet database search for studies relevant to your EIP question. Even if you use the and conjunction with filter terms, you might have to wade through many irrelevant references to find the ones that are pertinent to your EIP question. Moreover, by narrowing your search that way, you might miss some studies that are pertinent. Instead of expecting to find what you need easily with one set of search terms, you'll probably have