Finding knowledge translation articles in CINAHL.

BACKGROUND: The process of moving research into practice has a number of names including knowledge translation (KT). Researchers and decision makers need to be able to readily access the literature on KT for the field to grow and to evaluate the existing evidence. METHODS: To develop and validate search filters for finding KT articles in the database Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL). A gold standard database was constructed by hand searching and classifying articles from 12 journals as KT Content, KT Applications and KT Theory. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Sensitivity, specificity, precision, and accuracy of the search filters. RESULTS: Optimized search filters had fairly low sensitivity and specificity for KT Content (58.4% and 64.9% respectively), while sensitivity and specificity increased for retrieving KT Application (67.5% and 70.2%) and KT Theory articles (70.4% and 77.8%). CONCLUSION: Search filter performance was suboptimal marking the broad base of disciplines and vocabularies used by KT researchers. Such diversity makes retrieval of KT studies in CINAHL difficult.