Reporting quality of search methods in systematic reviews of HIV behavioral interventions (2000-2010): are the searches clearly explained, systematic and reproducible?
Open accessAbstract
Systematic reviews are an essential tool for researchers, prevention providers and policy makers who want to remain current with the evidence in the field. Systematic review must adhere to strict standards, as the results can provide a more objective appraisal of evidence for making scientific decisions than traditional narrative reviews. An integral component of a systematic review is the development and execution of a comprehensive systematic search to collect available and relevant information. A number of reporting guidelines have been developed to ensure quality publications of systematic reviews. These guidelines provide the essential elements to include in the review process and report in the final publication for complete transparency. We identified the common elements of reporting guidelines and examined the reporting quality of search methods in HIV behavioral intervention literature. Consistent with the findings from previous evaluations of reporting search methods of systematic reviews in other fields, our review shows a lack of full and transparent reporting within systematic reviews even though a plethora of guidelines exist. This review underscores the need for promoting the completeness of and adherence to transparent systematic search reporting within systematic reviews.
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Post-publication peer review of search methods, even amongst Cochrane reviews, has shown that reporting that appears complete may still pose challenges for those wishing to reproduce searches.
“Post-publication peer review of search methods, even amongst Cochrane reviews, which generally have superior reporting compared to non-Cochrane reviews [15], has shown that reporting that appears complete may still pose challenges for those wishing to reproduce searches [20 -24].”
From PRISMA-S: an extension to the PRISMA Statement for Reporting Literature Searches in Systematic Reviews (2021) · cites this paper as [24]
The Results (question 5; page unavailable) report that some published reviews, including Cochrane reviews, supplied full searches. The Discussion (page unavailable) says a search cannot be truly replicated without knowing the database interface, but the paper does not establish that reviews whose reporting appeared complete were tested and found difficult to reproduce. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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References 82 · Cited by 39
Research works printed but not linked: 10
- BMJ Evidence Based Centre Clinical evidence: study design search filters 2012 Available at: http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/x/set/static/ebm/learn/665076.html
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- Lefebvre C Manheimer E Glanville J Chapter 6: Searching for studies 2008 Higgins JPT Green S Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.0.0 (updated February 2008) The Cochrane Collaboration, 2008 Available at: http://www.cochrane.org/training/cochrane-handbook
- Lefebvre C Manheimer E Glanville J Chapter 6: Searching for studies 2009 Higgins JPT Green S Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.0.2 (updated September 2009) The Cochrane Collaboration, 2009 Available at: http://www.cochrane.org/training/cochrane-handbook
- OVID-EMBASE [database online] 1988 Accessed May 2010; Updated May 2011 New York, NY Wolters, Kluwer
- OVID-MEDLINE [database online] 1988 Accessed May 2010; Updated May 2011 New York, NY Wolters Kluwer
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- Sampson M McGowan J Lefebvre C Moher D Grimshaw J PRESS: Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies 2008a Ottawa Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health Available at: http://www.cadth.ca/media/pdf/477_PRESS-Peer-Review-Electronic-Search-Strategies_tr_e.pdf
- The Cochrane Library Issue 5 2010 Chichester Wiley
- The Cochrane Library Issue 5 2011 Chichester Wiley
- Authors
- Mullins, M. M., DeLuca, J. B., Crepaz, N., & Lyles, C. M.
- Affiliations
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mullins, Mary M.
- Venue
- Research Synthesis Methods
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-10-08
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 116-130
- ISSN
- 1759-2879 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5861495
- OpenAlex
- W2116277369
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 82
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 0.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Research Synthesis Methods (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Medical Library Association
- National Institutes of Health (CC999999)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Clinical practice guidelines implementation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Delphi Technique in Research
- Keywords
- search strategy reporting, reporting guidelines
- MeSH terms
- Behavior Therapy, Humans, Quality Assurance, Health Care, Review Literature as Topic, Reproducibility of Results, HIV Infections, Outcome Assessment, Health Care, Practice Guidelines as Topic, Data Mining, Research Report
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