PEDro has three search pages (Advanced, Simple and Consumer). We strongly encourage health professionals to use the Advanced Search, which contains 13 fields to define search terms with precision. For this reason, the SEARCH buttons in the header, footer and PEDro icon take you directly to the Advanced Search page. Those who are new to searching may like to begin with the Simple Search, which contains a single text field. Patients and other users of physiotherapy can access the Consumer Search, which has less technical language.
- Before you start searching
- Overview
- Using wildcards
- Combining search terms
- Missing abstract?
- Accessing full text
- Selecting records
2. Overview
The PEDro database can be searched from the Simple or Advanced search pages, which are accessed by clicking the links in the left navigation bar. Individual trials, reviews or guidelines are referred to as records. To find particular records, you specify search criteria (characteristics of the trials, reviews or guidelines you want to find) in the search page. Then PEDro searches all the records in the database and returns the Search Results: the set of records that matches the search criteria.
The Search Results are displayed as a list of titles. Clinical practice guidelines are shown first, followed by reviews and then trials. Guidelines are sorted by year (most recent first). Reviews are sorted so that Cochrane reviews appear first followed by non-Cochrane reviews, and then by year (most recent first). Trials are sorted by PEDro score (highest scores first) and then by year (most recent first). You can see more information about a record by clicking on its title. This gives a Detailed Search Result, which includes author, title, method, method score and (provided that the publisher has granted permission) abstract.
You can get back to the Search Results page from the Detailed Search Results page using the Back button on your browser. You can also select records for ease of saving, printing or emailing.
To find a record or group of records using the Simple search:
- Go to the Simple search page.
- Type your search term or terms into the search box.
- Click on the Start Search button to search the PEDro database.
This video tutorial describes how to do a simple search using PEDro.
To find a record or group of records using the Advanced search:
- Go to the Advanced search page.
- Specify what you are searching for, either by typing text into the text boxes or selecting from the pull-down menus of one of the search fields. Generally it is most efficient to search by typing one or more search terms in the Abstract & Title field.
- Note that you do not need to enter search terms in EVERY box. For most searches a maximum of three boxes is sufficient (and often one or two well chosen words in the Abstract & Title field is sufficient).
- You can search for variants of words (such as oedema and edema, or leg and legs) by using wildcards.
- At the bottom of the Advanced search page, select the number of records you want to be displayed on the Search Results page (between 5 and 50). This step is optional. If you do not make a selection, the search will return 20 records on each Search Results page.
- You can perform more powerful searches by entering search terms into more than one field and combining search terms with the AND and OR operators.
- Click on the Start Search button to search the PEDro database.
This video tutorial describes how to do an advanced search using PEDro.
3. Using wildcards
By default, PEDro will search for an exact word match. For example Bo finds all the records containing Bo K or Williams BO, but not records containing Boers M.
Often it is useful to search for a number of variations of a word. For example you may be interested in articles which contain either the word enthesopathy or the word enthesopathies. You can look for variations at the end of a word by using an asterisk (*) to indicate any letter or group of letters. Thus, typing enthesopath* will return records containing enthesopathy or enthesopathies.
You can also look for variations at the beginning of a word by using an asterisk (*) to indicate any letter or group of letters. For example, if you wanted to find papers on edema, oedema, lymphedema or lymphoedema, you could type *edema in a text field. The asterisk denotes unlimited truncation – it can represent any number of letters (including 0).
Another form of wildcard is the @ symbol, which denotes mandated (single character) truncation. You can use the @ symbol when there are single character variations on a word. For example, if you were searching by author and did not know if the author’s name was Rawson or Rawsen, you could search for Raws@n.
4. Combining search terms
To search using all the search terms in the fields on the Advanced search page, use the AND operator (by clicking the button next to Match all search terms (AND) at the bottom of the Advanced search page). This causes PEDro to search for only those trials, reviews or guidelines which contain all of the search terms you have specified. The effect is to restrict the number of retrieved records compared to the number that would be returned with any one of the individual search terms. Click on this button to combine search terms when a search using a single search term returns too many records.
To search using any of the search terms in the fields on the Advanced search page, use the OR operator (by clicking the button next to Match any search term (OR) at the bottom of the Advanced search page). This causes PEDro to search for trials, reviews or guidelines which contain any of the search terms you have specified. The effect is to increase the number of retrieved records compared to the number that would be returned with any one of the individual search terms. Click on this button to combine search terms when a search using a single search term returns too few records.
You cannot mix ANDs and ORs in a single search. However, you can make PEDro search for two (or more) words (and intervening spaces or punctuation) as if they were one by enclosing the words in inverted commas (eg, “lateral epicondylitis“). Effectively this combines the two terms with an AND operator. Alternatively, you can use the wildcard operators (*) to look for related words (eg, *edema). Effectively this combines related terms (in this example, edema, oedema, lymphedema and lymphoedema) with an OR operator. The combined terms can then be combined with other search fields using AND or OR operator at the bottom of the Advanced search page, if desired.
It is not possible to put wildcards in between inverted commas. For example “Medicine * Rehabilitation” will return no records.
The methods for combining search terms are summarised in the following table.
| To search for | Select | And type | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| All records with the words lateral and epicondylitis in the abstract (but not records containing just lateral or just epicondylitis in the abstract) | lateral epicondylitis in the Abstract & Title field | This will retrieve records with abstracts containing treatment of lateral epicondylitis as well as records with abstracts containing treatment of epicondylitis and pain on the lateral aspect of the arm | |
| All records containing the words lateral epicondylitis together in the abstract | “lateral epicondylitis” in the Abstract & Title field | This will retrieve records with abstracts containing treatment of lateral epicondylitis but would not retrieve a record with an abstract containing treatment of epicondylitis and pain on the lateral aspect of the arm | |
| All records with pain in the abstract and electrotherapy as the therapy (but not records containing just pain, and not records just indexed as electrotherapy) | Match all search terms (AND) | pain in the Abstract & Title field and electrotherapies, heat, cold in the Therapy field | |
| All records with pain in the abstract or electrotherapy as the therapy | Match any search term (OR) | pain in the Abstract & Title field and electrotherapies, heat, cold in the Therapy field |
PEDro Short Courses
PEDro runs online training for physiotherapists and health professionals looking to improve their skills in evidence-based practice.
Find out more about PEDro courses here.
