Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group

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Charge: To promote and develop competencies around evidence synthesis including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and other related methods of research synthesis, through activities such as: Facilitating discussion and peer-support; Creating and managing a resource page; Encouraging programming and publications around systematic reviews through ACRL.
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  • 1.  Confused by ProQuest ERIC results and parentheses

    Posted Oct 12, 2023 05:11 PM

    One of my users wanted to run his rapid scoping review search as one line because of a bad experience with line-by-line searching. I cautioned him that it would be harder for me to parse due to the complexity. He sent me this search in ProQuest ERIC:

    ((ABSTRACT(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 ABSTRACT(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND (ABSTRACT(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning")) OR (TITLE(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 TITLE(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND (TITLE(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning"))) PEER(yes) AND pd(20130701-20230701)

    I thought the parentheses looked a little unbalanced, used balancebraces.com to see where they might be missing, and came up with:

    (((abstract(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 abstract(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND abstract(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning")) OR ((title(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 title(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND title(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning"))) AND (PEER(yes) AND pd(20130701-20230701))

    To my surprise, both searches return 806 results. Are neither of us wrong? Are both of us wrong? Is one of us doing this better than the other? The intent is to search the abstract or title for the green/nature set within 4 words of the classroom/school set and to contain a mention of the attention set anywhere in those fields.



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    Amber Prentiss (she/her)
    Research and Instruction Librarian
    UGA Zell B. Miller Learning Center
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  • 2.  RE: Confused by ProQuest ERIC results and parentheses

    Posted Oct 13, 2023 08:33 AM
    I think neither of you are wrong and that the additional parentheses wouldn't change things. E.g., the following would give the same results
    • (TITLE(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning"))
    • TITLE(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning")
    One thing I've noticed about ProQuest is that it seems to have difficulties with search strings that have multiple proximity operators, but I am aware of that happening when I get error messages. So, if you're not getting error messages, I don't think it's a problem with your search.

    Another thing to consider is that the syntax has changed in ProQuest in recent months. If you go to Recent Searches, they have the following examples:

    [S1] AND ([S3] OR [S6])
    ([S1] AND [S3]) OR ([S1] AND [S2])
    [S3] NOT treatment

    That's a change. [ ] were not needed to combine sets in previous syntaxes.  

    Good luck!

    --

    Amy Riegelman (she, her, hers)
    Social Sciences & Evidence Synthesis Librarian
    University of Minnesota




    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Confused by ProQuest ERIC results and parentheses

    Posted Oct 13, 2023 09:51 AM

    Hi Amber, 

    I also got the 806 results when running this search line-by-line. When doing this, I noticed that the title field search is only turning up 4 results, and so you could consider expanding your search slightly by using the "anywhere except full text" (noft) field. Doing this gives you 913 results after filters are applied (I also truncated "executive function*"): 

    noft((plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 (classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND noft(focus* OR attention OR "executive function*")

    All the best,

    Kelly 



    ------------------------------
    Kelly Hangauer
    Education and Psychology Librarian
    University of Iowa Libraries
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    Original Message