Competency 1: Health data sources: NIH Flashcards
These are an important means of collecting health and social science information from a sample of people in a standardized way to better understand a larger population: questionnaires and in-depth interviews via phone, mail, email, and in-person
surveys
What are the drawbacks of surveys?
hard to get detailed info
people choose not to answer difficult questions
can have low response rates
cannot remember important details clearly
it won’t capture everyone as some people won’t have access to the medium through which the survey is distributed
These are used to track events and transactions between patients and health care providers. They offer information on diagnoses, procedures, lab tests, and other services.
medical records
These were were first introduced in the 1960s, but only became popular in the 2000s1, in part due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act. can make it easier for providers to enter information about patients.
Electronic health records (EHRs)
This is also known as administrative data, are another sort of electronic record, but on a much bigger scale. collect information on millions of doctors’ appointments, bills, insurance information, and other patient-provider communications.
Claims data
What is the downside to claims data (for researchers)
there may be low validity due to certain illegal billing practices, like ordering unnecessary tests or billing for services that were not provided.
What is the good thing about claims data (for researchers)?
they come directly from notes made by the health care provider, and the information is recorded at the time patient sees the doctor. Also, because of the large sample size of claims data, researchers can analyze groups of patients with rare illnesses and medical conditions
These are maintained by state and local governments, include births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and fetal deaths. They also record information about the cause of death, or details of the birth.
vital records
Why are vital records useful
they offer very detailed information and include information about rare disorders that end in death.
This is s the “ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, closely integrated with the timely dissemination of these data to those responsible for preventing and controlling disease and injury.” usually assoc with study of infectious disease
Public health surveillance
these are another type of public health surveillance. are systems that allow people to collect, store, retrieve, analyze, and disseminate information about people with a specific disease or condition. let researchers estimate how large a health problem is, determine the incidence of the disease, study trends over time, and evaluate the effects of certain environmental exposures
disease registries
This is defined as “information produced on all levels of government, academia, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e., where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.”1
grey literature
What is a drawback of grey literature?
It has little to no peer review
what is a benefit of grey literature?
includes data from many different sources with varying levels of reliability and review including government documents, dissertations, conference proceedings, newsletters, and blogs. A major advantage of grey literature is that because information is not published through commercial publishing channels (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles) the information can be published quicker. This is especially important with emerging issues.
These have gone through an evaluation process in which journal editors and other expert scholars critically assess the quality and scientific merit of the article and its research
peer-reviewed journal articles
