Lecture 6: Association & Causality Flashcards
define cause
a pre-cursor event required for the occurrence of the disease
a study may yield associations between exposure and disease, but this does not mean ……?
that the exposure is the cause of the disease
3 types of associations
artifactual associations
non-causal associations
causal associations
artifactual associations
’s may show an association but it’s actually not related at all
associations that are false/wrong
can come from bias or confounding
non-causal associations
can occur in 2 ways
- the disease causes the exposure
- disease and exposure are both related to a confounding variable
types of causal relationships
- sufficient cause
- necessary cause
- component cause
a set of minimal conditions that inevitably will produce disease 100% of the time
sufficient cause
type of cause which precedes a disease, and if present, the disease will always occur
sufficient cause
type of cause that must be present for the disease to occur, yet you may have this cause and never get the disease
necessary cause
a factor that if present, increases the probability of a particular disease. most common example?
component cause
ex. age
2 interactions in causal research
- synergism
2. parallelism
define ‘synergism’
interaction of at least 2 component-causes, such that the combined effect of the components is greater than the effect of just one cause being present
define ‘parallelism’
interaction of at least 2 component-causes, such that the measure of effect is greater if either one is present.
but they are not occurring at the same time. must have 2 variables to compare and their effects on RR separately
_______ causes work in concert to collectively become ______ causes.
multiple component causes together become sufficient causes
how can we decide if the RR’s of risk factors contain enough of a relationship to be called a cause?
use Hill’s Guidelines to create causal inferences
