ABSTRACT

Systematic literature reviews are common in social research for integrating and synthesising existing research. This paper argues that the outcomes of such reviews are affected by the choice of bibliographic databases. It presents evidence of substantial variation across three large electronic databases (Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCO) in a study on employee retention and staff turnover. It considers the specific articles, numbers returned, numbers shared across databases and perceived quality of journals hosting the retrieved articles. Results show that only 130 articles (5.7% of 2267 retrieved) were found common to all three databases, suggesting that decisions on how and where literature is retrieved can substantially affect the results of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The findings caution against the use of single databases and claiming comprehensiveness. The paper reflects on how additional literature search methods (e.g., contacting experts, citation indices) and their sequence of use can affect systematic review quality.

摘要

系统的文献综述在社会研究中很常见，用于整合和综合现有研究。本文认为，此类评论的结果受到书目数据库选择的影响。它提供了三个大型电子数据库（Scopus、Web of Science 和 EBSCO）在员工保留率和员工流动率研究中存在显着差异的证据。它考虑了特定文章、返回的数量、跨数据库共享的数量以及托管检索到的文章的期刊的感知质量。结果表明，只有 130 篇文章（检索到的 2267 篇文章中的 5.7%）在所有三个数据库中都是通用的，这表明关于文献检索方式和地点的决定会极大地影响系统评价和荟萃分析的结果。调查结果告诫不要使用单一数据库并声称全面。本文反映了其他文献检索方法（例如，联系专家、引文索引）及其使用顺序如何影响系统评价质量。