Table 2. Time taken for the search strategy to be executed in minutes.
| Time taken (min.) | Question 1 | Question 2 | Question 3 | Question 4 | Question 5 | Question 6 | Mean time (min.) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cochrane | PubMed | TRIP | Cochrane | PubMed | TRIP | Cochrane | PubMed | TRIP | Cochrane | PubMed | TRIP | Cochrane | PubMed | TRIP | Cochrane | PubMed | TRIP | |||
| 1 | Formulation of Answerable Question in PICO | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | ||||||||||||
| 2 | Characterization of Question | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 3.2 | ||||||||||||
| 3 | Formulation of Search Terms | 11 | 15 | 16 | 9 | 15 | 8 | 12.3 | ||||||||||||
| 4 | Preliminary Search | 15 | 17 | 21 | 15 | 28 | 15 | 18.5 | ||||||||||||
| 5 | Application of Search Strategy to Retrieve Articles | 10 | 14 | 9 | 9 | 12 | 7 | 7 | 12 | 5 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 12 | 5 | 8 | 17 | 9 | 9.6 |
| 6 | Title and Abstract Screening | 14 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 11 | 12.7 | ||||||||||||
| 7 | Checking for Article Relevancea | 42 (7) | 50 (7) | 40 (5) | 46 (7) | 36 (4) | 70 (12) | 47.3(7) | ||||||||||||
| 8 | Summarization of Evidence | 12 | 18 | 15 | 27 | 13 | 32 | 19.5 | ||||||||||||
| Total | 135 | 151 | 137 | 143 | 140 | 178 | 147.3 | |||||||||||||
a Number of articles appraised after removing duplications amongst databases are indicated in brackets