Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Dec;19(6):e31.
doi: 10.1136/qshc.2010.042432. Epub 2010 Jul 29.

Optimal search filters for detecting quality improvement studies in Medline

N L Wilczynski  1 , R B Haynes; QI Hedges Team
Affiliations

Optimal search filters for detecting quality improvement studies in Medline

N L Wilczynski et al. Qual Saf Health Care. 2010 Dec.

Abstract

Background: As the knowledge translation and comparative effectiveness research agendas gain momentum, we can expect more evidence on which to base quality improvement (QI) programmes. Unaided searches for such content in the literature, however, are likely to be daunting, with searches missing key articles while mainly retrieving articles that are irrelevant to the question being asked. The objective of this study was to develop and validate optimal Medline search filters for retrieving original and review articles about clinical QI.

Methods: Analytical survey in the McMaster Clinical Hedges database and Health Knowledge Refinery (HKR) of 161 clinical journals to determine the operating characteristics of QI search filters developed by computerised combinations of terms selected to detect original QI studies and systematic reviews meeting basic methodological criteria for scientific merit. Results from a derivation random subset of articles were tested in a validation random subset.

Results: The Clinical Hedges QI database contained 49,233 citations of which 471 (0.96%) were original or review QI studies; of those, 282 (60%) were methodologically sound. Combinations of search terms reached peak sensitivities of 100% at a specificity of 89.3% for detecting methodologically sound original and review QI studies, and sensitivities of 97.6% at a specificity of 53.0% for detecting all original and review QI studies independent of rigour. Operating characteristics of the search filters derived in the development database worked similarly in the validation database, without statistical differences.

Conclusion: New empirically derived Medline search filters have been validated to optimise retrieval of original and review QI articles.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources