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Government Information in Evidence Synthesis: Challenges & Opportunities

Elizabeth Sanders (she/her/hers)

Mary & John Gray Library, Lamar University

2024 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition

June 30, 2024

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Outline

  • Learning Objectives
  • Background
  • Case Studies
  • Challenges
  • Opportunities
  • Sources

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Learning Objectives

Participations will be able to:�

  • Describe how government information can contribute to evidence synthesis.
  • Identify government information resources that may be useful in evidence synthesis.
  • Identify potential challenges to utilizing government resources for evidence synthesis.

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Background

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What is Evidence Synthesis?

  • Systematic, transparent investigation resulting in a substantive, diverse body of evidence, which is then summarized (Eklund & Takahashi, 2017)�
  • Common Types
    • Scoping Review
    • Systematic Review
    • Meta-Analysis (Sutton et al, 2019)

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Why Government Information?

  • Evidence synthesis requires searching gray literature�
  • Government information = major source of gray literature
    • 54.3% of cited grey literature in nursing journals from governments (Woods et al, 2020)
    • 62% of 139 surveyed professors at University of Minnesota used government documents when looking at grey literature (Cooper et al, 2019)

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Case Studies

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Context

  • Players: Graduate Student, Faculty Member, Me�
  • Time: Summer-Fall 2023�
  • Scoping reviews on:
    • Rural hearing health care interventions for adults
    • Efficacy of astronaut training in improving/reducing space motion sickness

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Federal Gov. Info. Sources

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International Gov. Info. Sources

  • JAXA: Japanese government aerospace-related literature�
  • AIREX: Aerospace-related literature from NASA and other national and international organizations simultaneously�
  • Erasmus Experiment Archive: European Space Agency funded or co-funded experiments

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Challenges

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Accessibility

  • Certain sources inaccessible due to politics
    • Example: Russian space government information�
  • Language
    • Search tools may have English translation, but sources within do not�
  • Full Text
    • Not always present
    • PDFs may not be ADA Compliant

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Search & Export Features

  • Search Features
    • Not consistent across platforms
    • Not all have controlled vocabulary
    • Not all have advanced search capabilities�
  • Exporting Features
    • Not consistent across platforms
    • May require specialized knowledge (e.g., API)

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Opportunities

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Assisting Evidence Synthesis

  • Collaborating with teams to locate government information
    • Help identify resources and help navigate
    • Locate and include gathered information in gov. info. sources�
  • Collaborating with government and professional organizations to improve tools

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Future Research Directions

  • More research on how government information currently used in evidence synthesis
    • Citation analysis
    • Mapping�
  • Compile, evaluate, and disseminate tools and sources useful to evidence synthesis
    • Especially to expand beyond medical evidence synthesis
    • Examples: Gambling (Baxter, 2022); Food loss law (Hackstadt, 2021)�
  • Address challenges to using government databases for evidence synthesis

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Sources

  • Baxter, D. (2022). Revealing gambling's grey literature [Master's thesis, University of Alberta]. https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-5jtr-s546
  • Cooper, K.A., Marsolek, W.R, Riegelman, A.L., Farrell, S.L., & Kelly, J.A. (2019). Grey literature: Use, creation, and citation habits of faculty researchers across disciplines. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2314
  • Eklund, K. L. & Takahashi, R. (2017). A resource for developing an evidence synthesis report for policy-making. (Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report, no. 50), WHO Regional Office for Europe. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK453541/
  • Hackstadt, A. (2021). A review of grey literature cited by food loss law and policy scholarship. Journal of Agricultural & Food Information, 22(1-2): 22-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10496505.2021.1891546
  • Sutton, A., Clowes, M., Preston, L. & Booth, A. (2019). Meeting the review family: exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements. Heath Information and Libraries Journal, 36(3), 202-222. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12276
  • Woods, S., Phillips, K., & Dudash, A. (2020). Grey literature in top nursing journals: A bibliometric study. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 108(2), 262-269. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.760

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