Building search strategies is part of the Search for studies step.This tab offers a step-by-step guide to developing a search strategy for a systematic review. The theoretical explanation for each of the steps (left column) is supplemented with an example (right column).
It is recommended to work through the steps sequentially, starting with Step 1.
These are the steps required when developing a comprehensive search strategy for a systematic review:
1. Formulate the research question
3. Develop search terms - free-text terms
4. Develop search terms - controlled vocabulary terms
6. Phrase searching, wildcards and proximity operators
9. Pilot search strategy and monitor its development
To illustrate each step for developing a search strategy, the example used in the following 11 steps is (with a slight adaptation):
Other universities have developed extensive guides on building search strategies:
These videos from the Medical Library at Yale University outline how to build search strategies for a systematic review: