Successful combination of database search and snowballing for identification of primary studies in systematic literature studies

A good search strategy is essential for a successful systematic literature study. Historically, database searches have been the norm, which was later complemented with snowball searches. Our conjecture is that we can perform even better searches if combining these two search approaches, referred to as a hybrid search strategy. Our main objective was to compare and evaluate a hybrid search strategy. Furthermore, we compared four alternative hybrid search strategies to assess whether we could identify more cost-efficient ways of searching for relevant primary studies. To compare and evaluate the hybrid search strategy, we replicated the search procedure in a systematic literature review (SLR) on…

• CN
  Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

  Award: 312827/2020-2