Public Health Flashcards
Advantages case control study
- Good for rare outcomes
- Quicker than cohort or intervention
- Can investigate multiple exposures
Disadvantages case control study
- Difficulty finding controls to match with cases
- Prone to selection and information bias
Case control study
- Compares 2 groups of people
- Groups with and without the disease are selected and their past exposures are identified- a retrospective study
cohort study
- Longitudinal study
- Follows participants over period of time
- a sample is taken from the study population (those at risk of outcome) and split into subgroups, one being exposed and the other not being exposed. Incidence of the disease amongst the sub groups is later compared.
Advantages cohort study
- Can follow up a group with a rare exposure
- Good for common and multiple outcomes
- Less risk of selection and recall bias
Disadvantages cohort study
- Takes long time
- Loss to follow up
- Large sample size needed
Cross sectional studies
Looks at data at a single point in time
- exposure and outcome are measured simultaneously in a given population at a particular point in time
Advantafes cross sectional
- Quick and cheap
- Provide data on prevalence at single point in time
- Large sample size
- Good for surveillance and PH planning
Disadvantages cross secional
- Risk of reverse causality
- Cannot measure incidence
- Risk recall bias and non-response
RCT
- Subjects are randomly assigned to groups
- a sample from the population is split into two groups, one group is given treatment and the other is the control group.
Advantages RCT
- Low risk of bias and confounding
- Can infer causality
RCT disadvantages
- Time consuming
- Expensive
- Specific inclusion/exclusion criteria may mean study population different from typical patients
Selection bias
Systemic error in
- Selection of study participants
- Allocation of participants to different study groups
- Non response
- Loss to follow up
Information bias
- Measurement
- Observer
- Recall
- Reporting
Publication bias
- Not all trial results are published
Confoudning
- Estimate between an exposure and an outcome is distorted because of the association of the exposure with another factor that is also independently associated with the outcome
Reverse causality
- Association between an exposure and an outcome could be due to the outcome causing the eposure rather than the exposure causing the outcome
Sensitivity
a/(a+c)
a = +ve screening test and have disease TP
c = negative screening test and have disease FN
= those with the disease who are correctly identified
Specificity
d/(b+d)
d = negative test and dont have disease TN
b = positive screening test and dont have disease FP
- proportion of people without the disease who are correctly excluded by the screening test
PPV
a/(a+b)
a= +ve test and have TP
b = +ve test and dont FP
= proportion of people with +ve test who have the disease
NPV
d/(d+c)
d = -ve test and dont have TN
c = -ve test and do have FN
= Proportion with a -ve test who do not have disease
NHS criteria for screening test
The condition
- Important
- Epid understood
- Primary prevention implemented
- Mutation
Screening
- ongoing
- Cost balanced in relation to spending as a whole
Test
- Safe test
- Test values known and cut off defined
- Acceptable to population
- Further ix agreed
Treatment
- Effective treatment/intervention
- What and who to offer to
- Outcomes optimised
Lead time bias
When screening identifies an outcome earlier than it would otherwise have been identified this results in an apparent increase in survival time even if screening has no effect on outcome
Length time bias
- Differences in the length of time taken for a condition to progress to severe effects, that may affect the apparent efficacy of a screening method