Identifying the evidence: literature searching and evidence submission

Taken from the NICE Social Care Guidance Manual.

The systematic identification of evidence is an essential step in developing social care guidance. Systematic literature searches should be thorough, transparent and reproducible. Searches should also minimise ‘dissemination biases’ (Song et al. 2000), such as publication bias and database bias, that may affect the results of reviews.

This section is aimed primarily at information specialists in the NICE Collaborating Centre for Social Care (NCCSC). It provides advice on the sources to search and on how to develop strategies for systematic literature searches to identify social care and economic evidence. It also provides advice on other areas of information management that form an important part of the social care guidance development process.