Flashcards
Week 6
Cards in this deck (18)
- 1What is Research?Systematic approach to answering a question
- 2Goals of Epi Research?To diagnose health problems, Provide an est. of the burden of disease, Provide evidence of causal rx b/w exposure & disease, Provide evidence for PH intervention & Evaluate and plan health services. Measure the association b/w exposure and outcome (disease)
- 3Epi and Public HealthLess clear when we consider chronic diseases. Reflects wider interest, eco & political, that also play a role in the response to epi'cal evidence.
- 4Difference between Epidemiologic surveillance and Epidemiologic research?Surveillance: routine collection, systematic and continuous, descriptive designs and is for monitoring, evaluation and replanning. Research: not routine, uses descriptive and analytic designs and has a purpose to find the cause
- 5What is a research design?A specific approach best suited to answer a given research question. Two basic design strategies: descriptive and analytic study design
- 6Descriptive studiesDescribe all aspects of a disease and population, aims to develop a hypothesis, used in populations or subgroups, includes case report/case series, cross sectional and ecologic
- 7Case Report & Case SeriesCase Report: report about a case, detailed description of the exp. of a single patient. Case Series: description of a number of patients with a disease, characteristics or exposure. Short period of time. No control subjects
- 8Advantages of Case series studiesEasy to write, Useful to investigators designing a study to evaluate causes or explanations of observations and sometimes provides clues about a new disease
- 9Disadvantages of Case Series studiesBiases possible, Lack of comparison group & Conclusion – should be viewed as hypothesis generating and not conclusive.
- 10Cross Sectional StudiesAka surveys, polls, prevalence studies, Cross-section of a community is studied at a particular point of time. Sometimes using total population samples. Descriptive but could be analytical when provide info about association.
Assessment of presence or absence of both exposure & disease at the same point in time. AKA snap shot. - 11Ways to improve quality and speed of data collectionRestricting variables. Simple questionnaires (clear). Enough options for answers. Avoid pre loaded Qs. Combining qualitative and quantitative
methods. Training health care workers - 12Advantages of Cross sectionalEst. of prevalence of a disease and
other health outcomes. Can study entire populations or a representative sample. Best for evaluating diagnostic procedures. Contributes to improving new knowledge. Quick & inexpensive. - 13Disadvantages of Cross SectionalTemporal relationship between an exposure and disease cant be determined. Provides only snapshot in time of disease & can be misleading.
Under-represent people with a short course of disease. Subject to selection & Information bias (under and over reporting, recall bias) - 14Time PatternsCyclic changes, such as seasonal patterns
- 15TrendsChanges for example in disease incidence & prevalence, diagnostic techniques, population at risk, survival from disease
- 16Correlational Studies (Ecological)Studies conducted in specific population groups having specific characteristics in a specified geographical area. Units of analysis are populations or
groups rather than individuals. - 17Disadvantages of Correlational StudiesCannot correlate an exposure to disease occurrence in the same person. No information about exposure at individual level (Ecological fallacy). Inability to control for other factors that may be
associated with the outcome (confounders). Correlation found could be completely due to chance - 18Ecological Fallacyan error in inference that occurs when
association between variables observed at group level is assumed to exist at an individual level.
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- Epidemiology Flashcards on Week 6, created by Indah on 14/10/2013.
- Created by
- Indah · Oct 2013
- Updated
- Feb 19, 2016
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