Lecture 1: Health Management and Introduction

Question 1

What are examples of descriptive studies

Answer 1

Case report, case series, surveys

Question 2

What are examples of analytic studies

Answer 2

longitudinal (case control, cohort), clinical trials

Question 3

What are descriptive studies

Answer 3

Studies that aim to describe the distribution of disease in terms of animal, place and time, but in a purely descriptive study, no attempt is made to formally investigate reasons for the patterns of disease observed

Question 4

What are analytic studies

Answer 4

analytic studies aim to identify different subpopulations of animals (defined by the presence or absence of exposures of interest) amongst which disease occurrence differs, in attempt to identify risk factors or protective factors for disease (ie measuring associations)

Question 5

What are clinical trials

Answer 5

planned experiments that involve human or animal subjects and is designed to assess the safety and effectiveness of one or more therapeutic or prophylactic measure

Question 6

What is external validity?

Answer 6

determining whether the trial is applicable to the real world

Question 7

what is internal validity?

Answer 7

determining if the conclusions of the trial are justified (ie did they use appropriate methods, do their results match their conclusions)

Question 8

What does RCT stand for?

Answer 8

randomized, controlled (double-blinded clinical) trial

Question 9

Which validity does randomization and blinding address?

Answer 9

internal validity

Question 10

What are the three potential causes of clinical trial outcomes?

Answer 10

1. bias
2. chance
3. actual difference

Question 11

What is selection bias?

Answer 11

when the study group is not representative of the source population

Question 12

what is information bias?

Answer 12

when the investigator has the wrong information about an exposure or outcome of interest

Question 13

What are the two types of information bias

Answer 13

Non-differential and differential

Question 14

what is non-differential information bias

Answer 14

bias that is similar for all groups within a study

Question 15

what is differential information bias

Answer 15

bias that affects an exposure/outcome group differently than others in the same study

Question 16

what is confounding bias

Answer 16

bias that arises from an unmeasured/ignored factor is related to both the exposure and outcome of interest and is not intermediate (in the causal pathway) between exposure and outcome