Study Design Flashcards
What type of study is a follow-up in a prospective manner where exposure is determined at the outset?
Cohort study
Name 2 types of DESCRIPTIVE STUDIES
1) Case reports/ Case series
2) Cross-sectional (prevalence studies) including surveys and census
Name 3 types of ANALYTICAL STUDIES
1) Case control studies
2) Cohort studies
3) Ecological studies
Name 2 types of EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES
1) controlled studies
2) uncontrolled studies
When describing a research study, what are the two aspects of design related to recording of exposure and outcome?
1) identification (GROUPING) of subjects i.e. exposed vs unexposed, or cases vs controls
2) the TIME-COURSE i.e. prospective, retrospective or cross-sectional (exposure and outcome measured together)
What is a prospective study vs retrospective?
In a prospective study, a group of subjects is assembled who have been exposed to a risk/ intervention, and the researchers await an outcome (exposure-outcome)
In a retrospective study, the exposure has already happened so it is outcome-exposure) e.g case control study
What category of study has no testing of causal hypotheses or comparisons to other groups?
Descriptive studies
What type of study can SUGGEST a punitive relationship between variables?
“How common is a condition? What is the nature of this sample?”
Cross-sectional studies
What type of study:
Both exposure and disease have occurred before the onset of the study. It is often the first mode of studying a suspected association of causality. It is mostly useful in diseases where exposure is common, but the disease occurs only in a small proportion of those exposed. Defining a case is crucial – strict diagnostic criteria and eligibility criteria must be followed
Case Control
In a case control study:
How are controls selected?
Controls by definition must be identical to
cases except for the presence or absence of disease and recruited independently of exposure status.
Up to a ratio of 4:1, when the number of controls is increased, the power of a study increases. But not after exceeding this ratio.
To ensure comparability the cases and controls are often matched – i.e. certain selected variables such as age, sex, etc. are matched
when controls and patients are recruited. Matching can be done in groupwise or pairwise fashion, the latter being more time
consuming.
Overzealous matching may not only make recruitment of controls difficult, but can also reduce the risk difference between the two
groups. Overzealous matching may inadvertently result in matching for putative causal factors as well.
What is the odds ratio, and how is this used in case control studies?
This is the ratio of the odds of the event happening in an exposed group versus a non-exposed group.
To estimate the risk of exposure in case-control studies, a cross-product ratio called odds ratio is used. This is because relative risk
cannot be calculated as incidence rates are not available (no longitudinal observation to see new cases developing as in cohort
studies
In what type of study are observations repeated in the same population over a prolonged period of time?
Prospective longitudinal studies
Note: costly and time consuming but good for studying the course of an illness, incidence rates and risk factors
What category of studies involve a comparative analysis of 2 groups to measure the association between variables of interest?
Analytical studies
What type of study involves a group of people with specific characteristics/ exposure who are followed up over a period of time to detect an outcome?
“What are the effects of this risk factor/ exposure?”
Cohort study
What is a case-control study?
When there are groups of patients including those who have experienced an outcome (cases) and those who haven’t (controls) and then the researcher hypothesises about the causal relationship between the outcome, and an exposure of interest.
