Cómo hacer búsquedas de revisiones sistemáticas con APA Psycinfo
Systematic reviews help to determine the current state of a field of research. To carry out a systematic review, you need to search for scientific articles, and analyse and compare them critically, following certain standards. In this session, we will use APA Psycinfo to design effective searches for systematic reviews. We will explore key functionalities such as searching by field, the use of thesauruses, advanced search operators, and combined search techniques.
Content
Key points
It is defined as a research study, performed by a research team, that needs to follow specific standards and protocols (PRISMA statement and GRADE framework) and be replicable by others. For more information on the topic: Introduction to Systematic Reviews, Revisiones sistematizadas para trabajos académicos.
The stages of a systematic review consist, firstly, of clearly defining the protocol to be followed, including the objectives and the eligibility and relevance criteria. There is also a need to define where the information search will be performed (on which databases). Then you have to set the research questions, following the PICO structure (Patient, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome), carry out the research, examine the validity of the results and, lastly, draft the review.
- Advanced Search Tricks [24:46]
Some of the tricks you can use with APA PsycINFO and other databases are: Truncation (stemming), Boolean operators, Proximity operators (NEAR/n, PRE/n) and use the database thesaurus.
- A practical demonstration [36:15]
How to use advanced search techniques and assess the results in a systematic review. It uses the example of clinical psychology and utilizes the APA PsycINFO database, available in the Library.