While trying to provide an evidence-based review on cultural competency training and the effects on health practitioners‘ knowledge, skills, behavior, and attitudes, authors C. Jongen et al. use search strategies that revolve around secondary information. The search strategies included peer-reviewed articles and grey pieces of literature that were published in English between 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2015. Since cultural competence versus healthcare outcomes is a crucial area of focus regarding intervention strategies, countries that take such approaches seriously were considered when the CANZUS nations took part (Jongen et al. 2018). Those publications that were sought and used were those that showed consistency of evaluation of an intervention designed specifically to improve cultural competence for racial/ethnic minorities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The search strategy was six-step in nature with a blinded screening process resulting in 64 different studies for use in the review.
Moreover, the search strategy took into consideration the quality of the 64 studies in which case the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) and the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) techniques were used in verifying information credibility. Overall, the search strategy can be described as PRISMA, whereby the first search took place between January 2002- July 2012, and search two took place between August 2013 – December 2015. Ultimately, it is crucial to note that the key take-away from the methods adopted by the above authors is that this is a non-exhaustive search strategy. Hence, there is a possibility that some relevant studies were not found that may be due to the non-evaluation of non-publication of cultural competency related materials relative to healthcare outcomes.