Population Studies Flashcards

1
Q

What is meant by evidence based medicine?

A

the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients

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2
Q

What are the 3 things that must be integrated when practicing EBM?

A
  1. individual clinical expertise
  2. the best available external clinical evidence
  3. patient values & expectations
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3
Q

What are the 5 A’s when practicing EBM?

A
  1. ask
  2. access
  3. appraise
  4. apply
  5. assess
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4
Q

What is involved in the ask and access stages of the 5 A’s?

A

ASK - formulate a research question

ACCESS - find and retrieve the best evidence

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5
Q

What is involved in the appraise and apply stages of the 5 A’s?

A

APPRAISE - consider the evidence for its validity & relevance

APPLY - integrate the results into clinical practice

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6
Q

What is involved in the assess stage of the 5 A’s?

A

evaluate the effectiveness

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7
Q

What are the 4 types of evidence?

A
  1. description
  2. prediction
  3. causal inference
  4. qualitative
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8
Q

What is meant by ‘description’ as a type of evidence?

A

What happened and who was affected?

e.g people with X had Y

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9
Q

What is meant by ‘prediction’ as a type of evidence?

A

What will happen and who will be affected?

e.g. people with X are more likely to have Y

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10
Q

What is meant by ‘causal inference’ as a type of evidence?

A

What will happen if…? Why were they affected?

e.g. if we changed X, how would it change Y?

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11
Q

What is meant by qualitative evidence?

A

What matters and why does it matter?

How can we effectively change X and should we change it?

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12
Q

What is meant by causal inference being ‘deterministic’?

A

The cause can be easily linked to a certain outcome

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13
Q

What is meant by causal inference being ‘probabilistic’?

A

predictions about future health are not always correct due to vast variation between individuals

e.g. smoker surviving to 100

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14
Q

Why are groups studied, opposed to individuals?

A

Studying individual people is useless with probabilistic events

People will respond differently to the same exposure

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15
Q

Why can an entire population not be studied?

What is studied instead?

A

It is impossible or impractical to study an entire population

Samples are studied instead to make a generalisation about the population

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16
Q

What is the difference between clinical research and population health research?

A

Clinical research focuses on helping individuals

PHR focuses on helping and understanding populations

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17
Q

What is the main definition of a population?

A

The total inhabitants of a given country or area

e.g. Europe, Leeds, LS6 postcode

18
Q

What is the alternative definition of a population?

A

A group of people from which the sample was drawn

or it can be any collection of units e.g. hospitals in england

19
Q

What is a census?

A

when the sample studied is the entire population

20
Q

What defines a population-based study?

A

If the study population is the total population of a country or area

21
Q

What defines an observational study?

A

Something which cannot be experimented on

Observations are made and inferences are made based on what is seen

22
Q

What is a case report?

A

a clinician writes about an interesting case (e.g. new disease) in order for other people to recognise and learn from this experience

23
Q

What is a case series?

A

a description of a sample of cases with the same disease

a case report on multiple individuals

24
Q

What is the benefit of performing a case series?

A

It allows for description of natural history and prediction of prognosis

e.g. typical duration, survival and predictors of prognosis

25
Q

What is a register-based study?

A

A form of case series that uses disease registers to collect information on individuals with rare diseases

26
Q

What are disease registers?

A

they count and collect information on people diagnosed with a particular disease

27
Q

Why can disease registers often be used for research studies?

A

They are population-based

The disease occurrence per population can be estimated

28
Q

What is meant by a cross-sectional study?

A

The study of a group of people at a single point in time

“snapshot study”

29
Q

What are the common ways to collect information in a cross-sectional study?

A

Directly surveying or measuring a group of people

Gathering routinely-collected data

30
Q

What is the negative side of performing a cross-sectional study?

A

There is a preference to collecting as much data as possible

31
Q

What does it mean by the results of a cross-sectional study being ‘stratified’?

A

The results can be broken down (stratified) into subgroups

e.g. age, sex, occupation etc.

32
Q

What is meant by a cohort study?

A

Examining a group of people and collecting information repeatedly over a period of time

33
Q

What are the 3 common variables that descriptive studies are stratified into to generate hypotheses?

A
  1. individual level characteristics
  2. area level characteristics
  3. temporal characteristics
34
Q

What are examples of individual level characteristics?

A
  1. age
  2. sex
  3. socio-economic position
  4. ethnic group
  5. marital status
  6. occupation
35
Q

What are examples of area level characteristics?

A
  1. countries
  2. regions
  3. latitude
  4. rural vs urban areas
  5. more vs less deprived areas
36
Q

What are examples of temporal characteristics?

A
  1. secular trends (over time)

2. dynamic or seasonal trends (e.g. month, season, day of week)

37
Q

What is meant by an ecological study?

A

A study that examines variations between geographical areas

38
Q

What are the units of analysis in an ecological study?

A

the units of analysis are AREAS and not individual people

39
Q

When are ecological studies useful?

A

They CANNOT be used for testing hypotheses, but are useful for generating hypotheses

40
Q

How should the results of an ecological study be used?

A

They cannot be used to make clinically relevant inferences

More research is warranted to try and understand reasons for differences in certain areas