School of Nursing and Academic Division of Midwifery
RLO: Search strategy for locating randomised controlled trials
An electronic search strategy should generally have:
- Terms to search for the health condition of interest
- Terms to search for the intervention
- Terms to search for the study design
Generally speaking, systematic reviews of the effects of health care interventions focus on reports from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – it is generally accepted that this study design will lead to the most reliable estimate of effect.
Section: 
Resources
© 2005 School of Nursing
and Academic Division of Midwifery,
University of Nottingham
Some media elements © Microsoft Corporation
Developer: Fred Riley
Content author: Fiona Bath-Hextall
RLO released: 5th September, 2005
Page last updated: 18 October, 2013