Locating evidence

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Evaluation Summer School 2009
Locating evidence
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What will the workshop cover?

• Formulating a search question
• Creating a search strategy
• Identifying sources to search
• Obtaining hard copies of documents

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Formulating a search question

• Forces you to be preciseabout your search
• If the search is too generalyou may be
  overloadedwith information
• You need to break downthe question
  intocomponent parts

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What works questions
Questions about the effectiveness of
interventions. Component parts - PICO
Populatione.g. adults with mental health problems
Intervention e.g. pre-vocational training
Comparison intervention or no intervention (if
applicable) e.g. supported employment
Outcomee.g. increased employment opportunities
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Qualitative questions
Questions about needs, views, experiences etc.
Component parts
Target groupe.g. Children caring for a parent
with a long-term illness
Process Issuee.g. Views about the practical and
emotionalneeds of young carers
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Deciding on key search terms and creating a
search strategy

• The next step is to decide onkeywords relating
  to yoursearch question
• Base these around thedifferent component
  partsof your search question
• Consider a range of possiblealternative terms
  and spelling(e.g. behaviour/behavior)

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Deciding on terms (continued)

• Use truncation to find terms with the same
  root,e.g. child for child, childs, children,
  childhood etc.
• Use the phrase symbol to specify phrases,e.g.
  childhood studies or childhood ADJ studies

Use the database Help file to find out the
truncationand phrase symbols
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Combining search terms

• Allows you to broaden or narrow your search
• Helps to refine your search so it is more precise

Each database or gateway has its own
idiosyncrasies Always look on thehelp
orsearch tips section
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Searching general principles
Using Boolean Operators
To limit a searchuse AND or NOT
To broaden a searchuse OR
WARNING!Take carewhen using NOT
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Boolean operators example
OR
AND
NOT
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Identifying sources of information to search
Websites
Journals
Databases
Gateways
Search engines
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Search engines

• Search engines trawl through the Internet they
  look for web pages containing the search
  termsyou have used
• BUT the information returned is not assessed for
  quality or relevance you could be left with a
  mass of irrelevant web references
• Examples Google www.google.co.ukYahoo
  www.yahoo.co.uk

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Gateways

• Subject-specific gatewayto resources
• Arranged into sectionsand sub-sections
• Provide links toonline resources
• Search results are morerefined as they represent
  anarrow sub-section ofweb content
• Assessed for quality and relevanceBUT rely on
  the judgments of thosecompiling the gateway

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Some useful gateways

• Intute (www.intute.ac.uk)
• Yahoo socialsciences section(http//uk.dir.yahoo
  .com/)
• Research Web(www.researchweb.org.uk)
• Social Care Online(www.socialcareonline.org.uk)

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Databases

• Contain references topublished work
• Provide information aboutwhere to locate the
  material
• Usually provide abstracts,giving a brief
  overview of thedocument referenced
• Mostly require a subscription
• Dont tend to give full-textversions of articles

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Social Care Online

• www.socialcareonline.org.uk
• Free of charge social care database
• Produced by the Social Care Institute for
  Excellence (SCIE)
• Specialises in social care and social welfare
  material

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Using social care online
Three searching levels

• Simple search - enter a single word or phrase
• At intermediate level you need to use the
  keywords recognised by the database
• At advanced level there are options to select to
  help you use the right syntax to construct a free
  text search

Use and, or, not whencombining search
terms on thisdatabase at advanced
andintermediate level
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Obtaining hard copies of documents

• Inter-library loans
• Local university/college library
• Organisations websites