Session #5 Flashcards
must be the first disclosure containing sufficient info to enable peers to assess observations, repeat experiments, and to evaluate intellectual processess
primary source
includes books, review articles, and indexes to the literature and usually summarize, reviews, or organize info
secondary source
the internet is considered what?
a “buyer beware” situation
form of quality control and it provides high quality publications but it is NOT infaliable
peer-reviewed articles
a measure of a particular journals impact based on how often that journals articles are cited
impact factor
what is the formula for impact factor?
citations in year/ total articles published past 2 years
what is the best way to define a question?
PICO
When should you use keyword searching?
- current topics
- not easy to describe concepts
- no vocab exists in database
what are the pros to keyword searching?
- very current projects
- no knowledge of controlled vocab necessary
- slang
- broad, difficult to describe topics
what are the cons to keyword searching?
- not consistent
- burden on end-user to discover synonyms
- too many results
- difficult to limit results
sets of words/phrases used to describe a concept
-dictionary of accepted terms for a database
controlled vocabularies
when should you use a controlled vocabulary?
when searching a database that uses one
what are the pros to controlled vocabularies?
- burden on database to discover variation in terms
- consistency and reproducible searches
- specific and targeted
what are the cons to controlled vocabularies?
- restrictive
- burden on end-user to learn vocab
- vocab differs (not consistent)
many search engines allow you to place a symbol at the end of a word, which tells the engine to retrieve the word stem with different endings
truncation
a common symbol used is * although it is not universal
when you enclose your search in quotation marks
phrasing
are used to appropriately group the terms and operators to control the order of the search
parentheses
instructs the search engine to retrieve the info with a broad subject heading that are broken down into narrower subject headings
explode
a predefined search designed to target specific study methodologies (RCTs, Cohort, Systematic reviews)
filters
the degree to which the results of a study are likely to approximate to the truth
internal validity
what are the threats to internal validity?
bias
error
confounding
the extent to which the effects observed are applicable to a broader population
inference can only correctly be made to the population from which the sample was drawn
external validity (generalizability)
we often leap into inference far beyond the targeted population
