Research Paper Searching for disability in electronic databases of published literature

Background: As researchers in disability and health conduct systematic reviews with greater frequency, the definition of disability used in these reviews gains importance. 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. Consistency of definition across studies will help build a body of evidence that is comparable and amenable to synthesis. Objective: To illustrate 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. Methods: We 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. Results: The complete search strategy is presented. Results of the quality control steps indicated that our strategy was sufficiently sensitive and specific. Conclusions: Our search strategy will be valuable to researchers conducting literature reviews on broad populations with disabil