EBP#2 Chpt 5: Literature Reviews: Finding and Critically Appraising Evidence

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering the purposes, sources, search strategies, and appraisal tools for nursing research literature reviews.

Research Literature Review

A written summary of evidence on a research problem.

Ancestry Approach

A search strategy that involves tracking down earlier studies cited in the reference list of a report, also known as snowballing, footnote chasing, or pearl growing.

Descendancy Approach

A search strategy that uses a pivotal study to search forward to subsequent studies that have cited it.

PRISMA

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses; flow chart used to organize search results.

Boolean Operators

Logical operators such as AND, OR, and NOT used to expand or delimit a database search.

Truncation Symbol

A search feature, often represented by an asterisk ($*$), that allows for searching all forms of a root word.

CINAHL

The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature database.

MEDLINE

The Medical Literature On-Line database.

MeSH

Medical Subject Headings; the controlled vocabulary used to index articles for MEDLINE.

Evaluation Matrix

A matrix used to record quality assessment information of a set of retrieved studies.

Methodologic Matrix

A matrix used to record the methodologic features of a set of retrieved studies.

Results Matrix

A matrix used to record research findings from a set of studies to facilitate thematic analysis.

CASP

Critical Assessment Skills Programme; a set of tools used for the appraisal of individual studies.