Van Walraven

Appraisal of: Van Walraven C, Bennett C, Forster AJ. Derivation and validation of a MEDLINE search strategy for research studies that use administrative data. Health Serv Res. 2010 Dec;45(6 Pt 1):1836-45.

Reviewer(s):
Corinne Holubowich

Full Reference:
Van Walraven C, Bennett C, Forster AJ. Derivation and validation of a MEDLINE search strategy for research studies that use administrative data. Health Serv Res. 2010 Dec;45(6 Pt 1):1836-45.

Short description:
Authors describe their methods in deriving and validating a search strategy to identify administrative database research (ADR) in MEDLINE. ADR subject matter include health plan enrollment, service claims, hospital discharge, medication claims, etc. The top five journals based on impact factor in a group of ADR topic areas were chosen, and all citations from those journals for the period of one year were downloaded. The citations were reviewed to identify relevant publication types, Medical Subject Headings and text words. A search strategy was then generated using a chi-squared recursive partitioning macro in SAS. After testing, the strategy scored a 95% confidence interval for sensitivity. The developed strategy was also validated against a random sample of 1500 citations from MEDLINE. The sensitivity of the sample was 100% and the positive predictive value was 3.4%.

Limitations stated by the author(s):

Authors identified that the developed strategy used data-driven regression methodology and may have limited external validity, nor face validity. The strategy was also only developed for MEDLINE, and not tested pre-2006. Authors also note that their definition of administrative database research (ADR) is specific and may need to be expanded for other purposes.

Limitations stated by the reviewer(s):
None

Study Type:
Single study

Tags:
Search Filters, Organizational, Administration, MEDLINE