Acquiring Evidence

Search filters are standardized strategies that help identify higher quality literature within many of the medical databases. They are very useful for narrowing a search to high quality study designs but can also be used for other topics or age groups.

To incorporate a search filter into a search strategy, use AND to combine the final set of subject search with the final set of the filter.

The Librarians at the John W. Scott Health Sciences Library recommend the following search filters:
 

Database (Platform)	Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)	Prognostic Studies
CINAHL (EBSCO)	CINAHL_RCT
Embase (Ovid)	EMBASE_RCT	EMBASE_PROG
Medline (Ovid)	MEDLINE_RCT	MEDLINE_PROG
PsycInfo (Ovid)	PSYCINFO_RCT
PubMed	PUBMED_RCT	PUBMED_PROG
Scopus	SCOPUS_RCT
Web of Science	WOS_RCT