title: An overview of the design and methods for retrieving high-quality studies for clinical care.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  With the information explosion, the retrieval of the best clinical evidence from large, general purpose, bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE can be difficult. Both researchers conducting systematic reviews and clinicians faced with a patient care question are confronted with the daunting task of searching for the best medical literature in electronic databases. Many have advocated the use of search filters or "hedges" to assist with the searching process. The purpose of this report is to describe the design and methods of a study that set out to develop optimal search strategies for retrieving sound clinical studies of health disorders in large electronics databases.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To describe the design and methods of a study that set out to develop optimal search strategies for retrieving sound clinical studies of health disorders in large electronic databases.
  
  
  METHODS
  An analytic survey comparing hand searches of 170 journals in the year 2000 with retrievals from MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and PsycINFO for candidate search terms and combinations. The sensitivity, specificity, precision, and accuracy of unique search terms and combinations of search terms were calculated.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A study design modeled after a diagnostic testing procedure with a gold standard (the hand search of the literature) and a test (the search terms) is an effective way of developing, testing, and validating search strategies for use in large electronic databases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. wilczyn@mcmaster.ca
authors.forename: Nancy L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Wilczynski
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.forename: R Brian
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Haynes
mesh_terms: D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004526:Efficiency; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D016239:MEDLINE; D046650:Medical Subject Headings; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*