To delimit and define your search and to work with the results in a structured way, we recommend defining inclusion and exclusion criteria in advance. Some examples of selection criteria that you can consider are:
- What types of publications are you interested in, e.g. scientific articles, books, book chapters, proceedings, reports, guidelines, web pages?
- What languages can the publications be written in?
- In what time frame do you want to search?
- Various perspectives to be included, e.g., medical, psychological, sociological aspects.
By defining inclusion and exclusion criteria in advance, you gain a clearer picture of which publications are relevant to your searches.
Examples of possible criteria:
- Inclusion criteria: Interview studies and observational studies.
- Exclusion criteria: Studies with a publication date older than 10 years and studies in languages other than English.