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Systematic Reviews: What Are You Looking For?

  

  

How you describe something is not how everyone else describes the same thing.  (Latin terminology notwithstanding!).  

 

After identifying your essential research concepts, it is a best practice to come up with a list of variations that describe those same essential concepts -- to make sure that you will find all the possible articles out there on your topic, no matter how other researchers have described or named it.  

 

In some scientific disciplines, it is also essential to use the *standardized* search terminology when you are describing things - MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terminology is one example of such standardization.

 

 

 

 

 

Examples of current systematic review
techniques / search strategies in the literature:

 

In trying to best describe the people who work in a health-care setting the following alternate terms were ALL searched in order to assure a thorough and systematic set of results were found: