Coloured or Irlen lenses for reading difficulties - Part 2: Acquire

   Searching using the PICO:

The suggested PICO from Step 1: Ask was For children with reading difficulties (P) does coloured lenses (I) improve vision and/or reading ability (0). Using the PICO table keywords and synonyms were established, developing a search string of:

(Child*) AND (reading or learning or comprehension) AND (colour* or color* or Irlen) AND (len* or overlay) AND (vision). To see this as a worked example, please click here. This string can now be used to specifically search in a range of different search databases.

Learning activity 1: cut and paste the above string (in italics) in Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com) and see what you find. Consider:

-  how relevant the articles are to the question
- use the options on the left to further specify your search (e.g. by setting a year limit)
- determine if the resources are primary sources (studies) or secondary sources (syntheses or reviews)

  Time effective searching?

Secondary resources - summaries and syntheses of studies that already exist - are a good starting place to see if someone else has already completed a review of this literature. Such resources still require appraisal (in Step 3) but save time as you don't have to read and appraise every individual study on the topic.  

Learning activity 2:                              A list of secondary sources that may be relevant can be found on this site by clicking here.   Have a go at finding secondary sources using these sites and compare them to the documents found under the "Treatment" tab below.

Use the