Glossary of Terms from the NHS Website Flashcards
What is a before and after study?
A before and after study measures particular characteristics of a population or group of individuals at the end of an event or intervention and compares them with those characteristics before the event or intervention.
What is ‘blinding’?
This is not telling someone what treatment a person has received, or in some cases, the outcome of their treatment. This is to avoid them being influenced by their knowledge, for example in a drug trial.
What is a case control study?
It is a study that is used to identify risk factors for a medical condition. This type of study compares a group of patients who have a condition with a group of patients that do not have it and it looks back to see how the characteristics of the two groups differ.
What does Absolute Risk mean?
This measures the size of a risk in a person or group of people. For example it could be the risk of developing a disease over a certain period or it could measure the effect of treatment.
It can expressed in different ways; e.g. someone with a 1 in 10 risk of developing a disease has got a 10% chance or a 0.1 risk.
