Mattioli 2012

Appraisal of: "Mattioli S et al. Hidden effectiveness? Results of hand-searching Italian language journals for occupational health interventions. Occupational and environmental medicine 2012; 69(7): 522-524. "

Reviewer(s):

Elke Hausner

Siw Waffenschmidt

Full Reference:
Mattioli S et al. Hidden effectiveness? Results of hand-searching Italian language journals for occupational health interventions. Occupational and environmental medicine 2012; 69(7): 522-524.

Short description:

The study compared the yield of hand-searching with optimised electronic search strategies in retrieving occupational health (OH) intervention studies published in a language other than English.

The authors systematically hand-searched and screened reports of OH intervention studies published in Italian in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1990 and 2008. The Cochrane Occupational Safety and Health Review Groups (OSHRG) most sensitive search string retrieved all 16 articles published in the Italian language journals that were indexed in MEDLINE.

These findings suggest that a sensitive electronic search strategy may be able to find most of the OH interventions published in languages other than English that are indexed in MEDLINE.

Limitations stated by the author(s):

No limitations stated

Limitations stated by the reviewer(s):

Hand searched only 3 MEDLINE-indexed journals

Study Type:

Single study

Related Chapters:

Tags:

• hand searching

• search filters