DBAX 9102C Week 2 Neighboring Sector Search Example

Searching Next Door When Nobody Has Studied Movers: A Sector Search Protocol Deciding Which Neighboring Industries Count as Evidence for a Household Moving Company's Lifting Injuries, and Why

Student Name

Walden University

DBAX 9102C: Business Consulting Research Project Stage 2

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Searching Next Door When Nobody Has Studied Movers: A Sector Search Protocol Deciding Which Neighboring Industries Count as Evidence for a Household Moving Company's Lifting Injuries, and Why

Why a Sector Search

Directly relevant studies of household moving crews barely exist. A search limited to movers would return almost nothing, leaving my client, a Charlotte moving company with four depots and about 140 movers, with no evidence at all. A search open to every industry would return thousands of studies, most of them from settings so different that their findings would not transfer. This protocol decides in advance which neighboring sectors count, using the features of the client's work that matter for lifting injuries.

The Features That Define a Neighbor

Four features of moving work shape lifting risk. Loads are heavy, awkward and varied, from boxes to pianos. Work happens in changing locations, often on stairs and in tight spaces. Equipment must travel with the crew. And crews are small, usually two to four people, who decide on the spot how to lift. A neighboring sector counts as close if it shares at least three of these features, partial if it shares two, and distant otherwise.

Sectors Ranked

Table 1

Neighboring Sectors and Their Closeness to Household Moving

Closeness judged by the author against the four features; the ranking decides which findings are weighed most heavily.

Databases and Strings

The search will use PubMed, which indexes occupational health, along with Business Source Complete and the Cochrane Library. The core string combines intervention terms ("lifting equipment" OR "assistive device" OR "manual handling training" OR stretching OR "no lift policy") with outcome terms ("back injury" OR "musculoskeletal" OR "workers' compensation") and, for the sector filter, the sector names in the table. Studies from 1995 to the present in English are included. Systematic reviews, such as the Cochrane review by Verbeek et al. (2011), are searched first, then primary studies from close and partial sectors.

Screening Rules

A study is included if it evaluates one of the three interventions the client is weighing, reports an injury or claims outcome rather than only reported pain, and comes from a close or partial sector. Retail studies are included only if they are large and rigorous, since their distance means they inform the client only weakly. The large back belt trial by Wassell et al. (2000), conducted in retail stores, illustrates that case: it is rigorous, but its setting differs from moving on three of four features.

How Transfer Will Be Recorded

Each included study will be coded for its sector's closeness and for the conditions its authors say were necessary for the intervention to work. Cartwright and Hardie (2012) argue that judging whether evidence will travel requires identifying the supporting factors that made an intervention work, not only whether it worked. The coding sheet has a field for those factors.

A Trial Run of the Protocol

Before the full search, I ran the core string in PubMed alone with the sector filter limited to close sectors. It returned 212 records. Skimming the first fifty showed two problems. Many records studied patient handling in hospitals, which I had ranked as partial, because "home health" also matched hospital-based home care units. And several delivery studies concerned bicycle couriers, whose loads are light. I tightened the home health terms and added a load criterion to the screening rules: studies must involve loads that typically require two hands and full-body effort. The trial run cost an hour and saved what would have been days of screening irrelevant records.

Who Checks the Sector Ranking

The ranking of sectors is a judgment, and it drives which findings carry weight. I asked the client's operations manager, who has worked as a mover and a delivery driver, to rank the sectors without seeing my table. The manager placed appliance delivery closest, as I did, but rated construction trades as distant, noting that most trades carry tools rather than heavy household goods. I have moved construction to partial except for trades that carry heavy materials, such as drywall installers.

What the Search Will Miss

Industry reports from moving associations, insurers' loss data and unpublished company programs are excluded, though some may hold the most relevant evidence. I will ask the client's insurer whether it can share anonymized loss data for movers, which would be internal evidence rather than literature.

References

Cartwright, N., & Hardie, J. (2012). Evidence-based policy: A practical guide to doing it better. Oxford University Press.

Verbeek, J. H., Martimo, K.-P., Karppinen, J., Kuijer, P. P. F. M., Viikari-Juntura, E., & Takala, E.-P. (2011). Manual material handling advice and assistive devices for preventing and treating back pain in workers. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2011(6), Article CD005958. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD005958.pub3

Wassell, J. T., Gardner, L. I., Landsittel, D. P., Johnston, J. J., & Johnston, J. M. (2000). A prospective study of back belts for prevention of back pain and injury. JAMA, 284(21), 2727-2732. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.284.21.2727