Week 1 Flashcards
What is the definition of evidence based healthcare?
“Management of patients or clients using the current best evidence of effectiveness”
What are the three components of evidence based healthcare?
- Patient choice
- Best available evidence
- Clinical experience
What are the 5 steps to developing evidence based healthcare?
- Translate uncertainty into an answerable question
- Search and find best available evidence
- Critically appraise evidence
- Apply the evidence in practice
- Evaluate the effectiveness
What is the definition of epidemiology?
The study of distribution and determinants of disease (health-related states or events) in specified populations and applying the findings to improving control of health problems.
What is biostatistics?
The practice of collecting, summarising, analysing, and drawing conclusions from data.
What is the difference between epidemiology and biostatistics?
Epidemiology = Planning studies to collect data
Biostatistics = Collect and analyse data to draw valid conclusions
What are the three D factors to remember in epidemiology?
- Disease
- Distribution
- Determinants
What are the three most common types of studies in epidemiology?
- Case control studies
- Cohort studies
- Intervention/experimental studies
What is a Case Control study?
Diseased and non-diseased: comparing people with the disease to the people without the disease to find the cause.
What is a Cohort study?
Exposed with non-exposed: comparing two cohorts with different characteristics to compare their risk of developing disease or health-related states or events.
What is an Intervention/Experimental study?
Comparing the health of people who receive an intervention to those that don’t.
How many steps are involved in conducting a study?
Eight
What is the first step in conducting a study?
Establish an unanswered but answerable question
What are the first four steps involved in conducting a study?
- Unanswered but answerable question
- Search published literature
- Plan & conduct study
- Data entry, cleaning, screening for errors
What are the final four steps involved in conducting a study?
- Summarise data with frequencies, graphs to make sense of the data
- Choose suitable statistical test/analyses to answer research question
- Draw valid and objective conclusions
- Share and publish the study
Describe what a population is?
Total number of people or objects from which data can potentially be drawn. (People that fit the criteria for the study)
Describe what a sample is?
A smaller subset of people selected for a study that represent the population of interest.
What is a sampling frame? How does it differ from the population of interest?
A sampling frame is the group from which a sample is selected; a list of the whole population.
A sampling frame is an actual list of people from the desired population; the population is the absolute value of people that could potentially be studied (but impossible to do so).
What is a simple random sample?
Where everyone has equal chance (or probability) to be in the sample; they’re picked randomly without special consideration of their characteristics.
What is a population parameter?
An unknown population value
What are descriptive statistics?
Statistics that describe the sample representing the population.
What are inferential statistics?
Statistics that infer (or make conclusions) about the impact of variables.
What is a variable?
Something that can be changed or varied.
What is an independent variable?
A factor that is manipulated in an experiment to see the resulting effect on other (dependent variables)
What is a dependent variable?
A factor that is measured in an experiment.
What is an extraneous variable?
A variable that can affect the reliability of the study that cannot be controlled.
What is a confounding variable?
A variable that can affect the reliability of the study but difficult to/cannot be controlled.
What are demographic variables? List 4 examples.
Characteristics of participants.
Examples:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Education
4. Employment
What is exposure?
Determinant or influencing factor; can be harmful or beneficial.
What kind of variable is exposure?
Independent variable
What is an outcome?
Outcome = dependent variable
The result of exposure.
What is sample variation?
Varying results from sample to sample.
What is sampling error?
The difference between estimated value (of a parameter) and its real/true value.
What are the two overarching types of data?
Categorical and continuous data
What is categorical data?
Data in which variables can be categorised on characteristics; these variables aren’t measurable beyond a yes or no for a characteristic
What are three examples of categorical data?
- Gender
- Occupation
- Religion
What are the two types of categorical data?
- Nominal categorical data
- Ordinal categorical data
What is continuous data?
Data with variables that are measurable.
What are the two types of continuous data?
- Interval continuous data
- Ratio continuous data
What are the four scales of measurement in data in order from least precise to most precise?
- Nominal
- Ordinal
- Interval
- Ratio
What is nominal data? How is it measured?
Nominal categorical data: involves names and categories only with no information regarding magnitude or size.
Measured with binary (1 for yes, 0 for no)
What is ordinal data? How is it measured?
Ordinal categorical data: has no mathematical scale but has an order. The gaps/intervals between the categories are not numerically equal or equidistant.
Measured in levels (e.g., disease severity - mild, moderate, and severe; winners and losers - 1st, 2nd, 3rd)
What is interval data? Name 3 examples.
Interval continuous data: has ‘intervals’ between each measurement that are numerically equal or equidistant. No true zero point.
Examples:
1. temperature
2. age
3. IQ test scores
