EVIDENCE –BASED PRACTICE TUTORIAL No

EVIDENCE –BASED PRACTICE TUTORIAL No. 3 FURTHER SEARCHING ON THE INTERNET. Basic search tips were described in the December, 2004 edition of The Osteopath. It is possible to narrow database searches even further using a number features. Different databases will require different features which vary the sensitivity and therefore the specificity of the search. The search features which can be used in combination or singly, are described below: Truncation * or $ or : When placed at the end of a word, this will include terms with all variable endings to the beginning of the word in the search, e.g. analy* will search for analytic, analytical, analyse, etc. Focus * When placed at the beginning of a word, this searches for articles in which the word is a major focus of the paper, e.g. *migraine will search for papers with migraine as the major subject Explode/expand Explode or exp When placed before a term, this will search for all possible related options, e.g. explode headache will search for different headache types such as cluster, vascular and so on. NB: some indexers do not consider migraine a type of headache, therefore, to include all headaches the Boolean operator “OR” needs to be added, i.e. explode headache OR migraine Wildcards ? When placed within a word, this indicates that the letter it replaces is a variable or absent. The search will include all permutations of the word, e.g. gyn?ecology will search ...