Table 2 Tools and techniques for searching databases
From: Socioeconomic position and body composition across the life course: a systematic review protocol
Technique and description | Command | Example |
|---|---|---|
All known synonyms of key words | socioeconomic position may include socio-economic, education, occupation, income etc. | |
Replace up to one character in the word—allows alternative spellings to be included. | ? | Analy?er Would include both Analyser and Analyzer |
Truncation command—used to acknowledge and capture alternative endings to words. | “root word”* | Adipos* would additionally search for adiposity and adipose |
Boolean logic operators—used to (a) identify results with at least one of the search terms present and (b) to combine results of different search terms. | a) “OR” b) “AND” | a) Muscle OR Lean Mass Index would retrieve articles that either have terms. |
b) Body Composition AND Socioeconomic Position would only retrieve articles with both terms. | ||
Proximity operators—used to identify words within a specified distance of each other. | Ovid: adj3 ESBCO: n3 | Occupation* adj3 father* would identify articles whereby “occupation” and “father” are within three words of each other. |