Women's Decision-Making And Factors Affecting Their Choice Of ...

The search strategy
The aim of the search is to provide as comprehensive a list as possible of
both published and unpublished studies on the question of choice of place of
delivery. The search strategy must be as unbiased as possible, to minimise the
possibility of weakening the conclusions of the review through publication bias
(Easterbrook, Berlin, Gopalan et al 1991). There are some online databases such
as Medline, EMBASE and the others, mentioned above, that are useful for
locating medical literature. However, they do not record all publications from all
journals (Dickersin, Scherer, and Lefebvre 1994), and, therefore, it is important to
use several databases to maximise coverage of the search. It was decided in this
review that to avoid missing potential papers, the search should begin by being
very wide, and would include all studies about the place of delivery. It would
then be trimmed down to include only those studies dealing specifically with
women's views of factors affecting choice of venue. The search strategy was
divided into three stages.
First stage
The first stage was an introductory tour of the area to discover the
different studies about the place of birth, the volume of literature available in the
topic of interest, and the study designs employed. During the first stage, the main
issues and controversies about the topic of place of birth were discovered that
served as a guide to the specific questions to be addressed, and the outcomes to be
measured.
stage:
The following table shows the search terms employed during the first
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