TY - JOUR
T1 - Pico, Picos and Spider
T2 - A comparison study of specificity and sensitivity in three search tools for qualitative systematic reviews
AU - Methley, Abigail
AU - Campbell, Stephen
AU - Chew-Graham, Carolyn
AU - McNally, Rosalind
AU - Cheraghi-Sohi, Sudeh
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by a School for Primary Care Research PhD studentship from the National Institute of Health Research. Support in selecting search terms is acknowledged from Olivia Walsby, Academic Engagement Librarian at the University of Manchester. We are grateful to Professor Peter Bower for his comments on the protocol.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Methley et al.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Background: Qualitative systematic reviews are increasing in popularity in evidence based health care. Difficulties have been reported in conducting literature searches of qualitative research using the PICO search tool. An alternative search tool, entitled SPIDER, was recently developed for more effective searching of qualitative research, but remained untested beyond its development team. Methods: In this article we tested the ‘SPIDER’ search tool in a systematic narrative review of qualitative literature investigating the health care experiences of people with Multiple Sclerosis. Identical search terms were combined into the PICO or SPIDER search tool and compared across Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE and EBSCO CINAHL Plus databases. In addition, we added to this method by comparing initial SPIDER and PICO tools to a modified version of PICO with added qualitative search terms (PICOS). Results: Results showed a greater number of hits from the PICO searches, in comparison to the SPIDER searches, with greater sensitivity. SPIDER searches showed greatest specificity for every database. The modified PICO demonstrated equal or higher sensitivity than SPIDER searches, and equal or lower specificity than SPIDER searches. The modified PICO demonstrated lower sensitivity and greater specificity than PICO searches. Conclusions: The recommendations for practice are therefore to use the PICO tool for a fully comprehensive search but the PICOS tool where time and resources are limited. Based on these limited findings the SPIDER tool would not be recommended due to the risk of not identifying relevant papers, but has potential due to its greater specificity.
AB - Background: Qualitative systematic reviews are increasing in popularity in evidence based health care. Difficulties have been reported in conducting literature searches of qualitative research using the PICO search tool. An alternative search tool, entitled SPIDER, was recently developed for more effective searching of qualitative research, but remained untested beyond its development team. Methods: In this article we tested the ‘SPIDER’ search tool in a systematic narrative review of qualitative literature investigating the health care experiences of people with Multiple Sclerosis. Identical search terms were combined into the PICO or SPIDER search tool and compared across Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE and EBSCO CINAHL Plus databases. In addition, we added to this method by comparing initial SPIDER and PICO tools to a modified version of PICO with added qualitative search terms (PICOS). Results: Results showed a greater number of hits from the PICO searches, in comparison to the SPIDER searches, with greater sensitivity. SPIDER searches showed greatest specificity for every database. The modified PICO demonstrated equal or higher sensitivity than SPIDER searches, and equal or lower specificity than SPIDER searches. The modified PICO demonstrated lower sensitivity and greater specificity than PICO searches. Conclusions: The recommendations for practice are therefore to use the PICO tool for a fully comprehensive search but the PICOS tool where time and resources are limited. Based on these limited findings the SPIDER tool would not be recommended due to the risk of not identifying relevant papers, but has potential due to its greater specificity.
KW - Health care
KW - Multiple sclerosis (MS)
KW - Qualitative
KW - Research
KW - Research evaluation
KW - Systematic reviews
KW - Users' experiences
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84988603312&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.mendeley.com/research/pico-picos-spider-comparison-study-specificity-sensitivity-three-search-tools-qualitative-systematic
U2 - 10.1186/s12913-014-0579-0
DO - 10.1186/s12913-014-0579-0
M3 - Article
SN - 1472-6963
VL - 14
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - BMC Health Services Research
JF - BMC Health Services Research
M1 - 579
ER -