Using online databases to find peer-reviewed journal articles on injury prevention and safety promotion research: a study of textword queries by SafetyLit users.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the capacity of textword queries to provide a comprehensive listing of articles on injury prevention and safety promotion (IPSP) concepts in a literature database.


METHODS
All terms used to search SafetyLit (a database of scholarly literature selected for its relevance to the IPSP field) during the years 2000-2005 were listed and then examined to identify terms that are synonyms for the same concept. Terms were grouped by concept, the number of queries that used terms within each concept category were summed, and the concepts were then ordered by the total number of searches for each concept category. For each textword, the proportion of all articles for that concept that could be found by using it alone was calculated.


RESULTS
Each of the 25 most searched-for concepts has 4 to 40 synonyms. Sixteen of the concepts required queries using two or more terms to find 75% of the available articles. Few searchers used a sufficient number of textword synonyms in their queries to return a complete listing of the available material.


CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of this study, queries using only one or two textword terms are insufficiently sensitive to find all relevant journal articles about an IPSP concept.
Lawrence
David W
DW
Karolinska Institutet, Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of International Health (IHCAR), Injuries' Social Aetiology and Consequences Group, Stockholm, Sweden. David.Lawrence@sdsu.edu
D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000592:standards*; D007256:Information Systems; D008297:Male; D012449:Safety; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000517:prevention & control*