A structured literature review for risk assessment: EMF and human health risk

Risk Anal. 1994 Feb;14(1):97-100. doi: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1994.tb00031.x.

Abstract

The volume of publications on any given topic makes it difficult to select an appropriate subset of publications for review by an expert panel. This paper proposes a method for selecting a subset using a protocol that attempts to order publications based upon good research methods. The protocol was followed by graduate students with no expert knowledge of the area they were reviewing. They reduced 11730 articles on the topic of EMF and Health risk to 68 articles that were reviewed by an expert panel. The interrater reliability was 96% and 94% of the relevant articles were captured by this process.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Electromagnetic Fields / adverse effects*
  • Health Status Indicators*
  • Humans
  • Information Storage and Retrieval*
  • MEDLARS
  • MEDLINE
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Research Design
  • Review Literature as Topic*
  • Risk*