I am currently developing a search strategy for a scoping review covering a broad variety of completely different forms of international cooperation (IC) in the context of faculty development in health professions education.
The problem is the absolute over-sensitivity of a universal search algorithm (meaning all synonyms/MeSH terms etc. in one boolean string combined)! Extracting the search terms for all wanted forms of international cooperation and applying them seems impossible without retrieving > 10 thousand hits in a search
So how to go about a sequential search strategy??? Is that viable? with concern to translation to different search interfaces?? to reproducibility??? to efficiency???
Anybody knows of any guides, literature etc. on the matter??
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
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identified forms of international cooperation in the research until now:
A)Mobility program
B)Conference
C)Research cooperation
D)Learning arrangement
E)Curriculum cooperation
F)Joint course/degree
G) Partnership
H) Development project
I) Networking (specify)
taken from: Research Proposal STUDY PROTOCOL | The use of international cooperation in fac...
The project: https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-use-of-international-cooperation-in-faculty-development-of-health-professions-education-a-rapid-scoping-review
...down the road I have opted for an iterative sequential construction of the search syntax guided by the PCC framework. The P is free text-word (TX) guided as CINAHL anyway includes almost only eligible defined "Participants." Context and Concept of PCC are subject heading guided and will be augmented by text-word combinations.
I have build a first version of the search syntax combining all PCC for CINAHL utilizing EBSCO interface. https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-use-of-international-cooperation-in-faculty-development-of-health-professions-education-a-rapid-scoping-review/update/61a69c4eb3729f0f6196caf1
The next step will be validating all identified forms of international cooperation (IC) within this syntax and add accordingly text-word combinations.
maybe this does help somebody.
here the final search strategy (so far):
Experiment Findings Search strategy by database
- Badges
- Science topic