Search terms for systematic review on the effects of cash transfer programmes on child health
| Component of review topic | Search terms |
| Population | Child, neonatal, infant |
| Intervention: policy or programme | Policy, social policy, economic policy, public policy, programme, benefit*, social welfare or TANF, EITC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, PRWA, FLMA, tax, cash transfer*, conditional cash transfer*, unconditional cash transfer*, income supplement* |
| Health outcome | Birth weight, mortality |
| Statistical methods (quasi-experimental techniques) | Difference-in-differences, propensity score, synthetic control, regression discontinuity, instrumental variable, and near-far matching, quasi experiment, natural experiment |
We restricted our search results to English, humans and paediatric age groups, abstracts, journal articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, reviews and observational studies. For CINAHL, we restricted search results to academic journals.
Search terms within each row were combined with ‘OR’ and search terms across different rows were combined with ‘AND’.
Wherever possible, we used medical subject headings (MeSH) in our search of the individual databases. In cases where MeSH headings were not available, we entered search terms as keywords.
For Medline and EMBASE, ‘public policy’ also included health policy or healthcare reform or nutrition policy. For CINAHL, we used ‘public policy’ or ‘health policy’. For Cochrane Reviews, we exploded the term ‘economic policy’ within ‘public policy’.