PDQ-Evidence can easily be searched by typing terms into the search box and clicking on the “Search PDQ-Evidence” button. If more than one word is included in the search query, the results will only show articles that include all of the words that are used in either the title or the abstract.
If few or no articles are found, the search can be broadened by clicking on the link under the search box: “Click here to broaden the search”. Doing this will show articles that include any of the words that are used in either the title or the abstract prioritized according to several factors, such as proximity between words, frequency of each word, etc. The search can also be broadened by using fewer terms in the query, by adding synonyms (and then clicking on “Click here to broaden the search”) or by using Advanced search and OR between terms.
If many irrelevant articles are found, the search can be narrowed by putting the terms in quotes (e.g. “community health workers”). This will show articles that include exactly the phrase that is in quotes.
By clicking on “Advanced search” it is possible to restrict the search to specific fields (title, abstract, title and abstract, or author, etc) and to use Boolean logic; i.e. choosing whether to search only for articles that include more than one term (using AND) or to search for articles that include any of two or more terms (using OR).
PDQ-Evidence is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License
