title: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature search strategies for identifying methodologically sound causation and prognosis studies.
abstract: We developed search strategies for detecting sound articles on causation and prognosis in Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) in the year 2000. An analytic survey was conducted, comparing hand searches of 75 journals with retrievals from CINAHL for 5,020 search terms and 11,784 combinations for causation and 9,946 combinations for prognosis. For detecting sound causation studies, a three-term strategy maximized sensitivity at 97.0% with a specificity of 52.3%. For detecting sound prognosis studies, a three-term strategy maximized sensitivity at 92.2% with a specificity of 50.0%. These search filters will enhance the searching efforts of clinicians and researchers.
authors.affiliation: Health Information Research Unit, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. walkerc@mcmaster.ca
authors.forename: Cindy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Walker-Dilks
authors.forename: Nancy L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Wilczynski
authors.forename: R Brian
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Haynes
mesh_terms: D015984:Causality; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D015399:Nursing Research; D011379:Prognosis; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity