Searching for disability in electronic databases of published literature

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Article describes a process for operationalizing the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Disability, Functioning, and Health concept of disability for MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases. Translating a comprehensive conceptual definition of “disability” into an operational definition that utilizes electronic databases in the health sciences is a difficult step necessary for performing systematic literature reviews in the field. The authors created an electronic search strategy in conjunction with a reference librarian and an expert panel. Quality control steps included comparison of search results to results of a search for a specific disabling condition and to articles nominated by the expert panel. The complete search strategy is presented. Results of the quality control steps indicated that the strategy was sufficiently sensitive and specific and will be valuable to researchers conducting literature reviews on broad populations with disabilities.

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