Table 2.

Tools and techniques to be used in the online database search

Tool/technique	Description	Example
Synonyms keyword search	Search using all known synonyms including both British and US spellings.	Socioeconomic position synonyms: socioeconomic, socio-economic, occupation, education etc.
Truncation commands	'root word*': captures alternative word endings	Occupation*: searches for occupation, occupations, occupational etc.
Proximity operators	Identify words that are within a chosen distance of each other. Operators used will be Adj3 in OvidSP interface and N3 in EBSCO interface.	Occupation* adj3 class*: locates articles where occupation* and class* are within three words of each other.
Boolean logic operators	Two commands will be used
	1. ‘OR’ to locate results with at least one of the search terms present.	1. (Occupation* OR education*): returns results with occupation* or education*.
	2. ‘AND’ will be used near end of search to combine results of different search concepts.	2. Concept 1 (e.g. childhood SEP) AND concept 2 (e.g. adult LTPA): returns results that include concepts 1 and 2.