Performance of a mixed filter to identify relevant studies for mixed studies reviews

OBJECTIVE: Mixed studies reviews include empirical studies with diverse designs. Given that identifying relevant studies for such reviews is time consuming, a mixed filter was developed. METHODS: The filter was used for six journals from three disciplines. For each journal, database records were coded "empirical" (relevant) when they mentioned a research question or objective, data collection, analysis, and results. We measured precision (proportion of retrieved documents being relevant), sensitivity (proportion of relevant documents retrieved), and specificity (proportion of nonrelevant documents not retrieved). RESULTS: Records were coded with and without the filter, and descriptive statistics were performed, suggesting the mixed filter has high sensitivity.