Designing Epidemiological Studies Flashcards
What are the 2 types of epidemiological investigation?
descriptive and analytic
What is descriptive epidemiological investigation?
Describe the problem at an aggregated level. Can be used to inform later analytic research.
What is analytic epidemiological investigation?
Deploy and test hypotheses, often at a person level through which association can be measured and causation inferred.
What is the more commonly used epidemiological investigation?
Analytic
What are the different types of descriptive epidemiological investigation?
- Case reports
- Case Studies
- Cross sectional
- Longitudinal
- Ecological
What are the different types of analytic epidemiological investigation?
- Observational
- Experimental/intervention
What is are some common things that descriptive epidemiology measures?
incidence and prevalence
How is descriptive epidemiology data usually given?
point estimates with confidence intervals around them
What can a single characteristic be classed as?
exposure or outcome
What is an exposure?
Age, gender and occupation would be considered exposures; as would be living in a particular area.
What is an outcome?
oftentimes focussed on morbidity (disease) and mortality (death)
What are some things that can be part of a descriptive epidemiological investigation?
person: disease status, age, gender, occupation
place: hospital, geographic area, community
time: at a point in time, over a period
