Week 5: Design 1

Question 1

What are the 2 types of population/clinical health research? Explain

Answer 1

1. descriptive = to monitor public health, evaluate success of intervention programs, to generate hypotheses about causes of disease–> counting cases of disease in pop
2. analytic = evaluate hypothesis about the causes of disease, evaluate success of intervention programs–> comparing groups and systematically determining if there is an association between exposure and outcome

Question 2

identify if each type of study requires descriptive, analytic or both forms of research:
a) case reports
b) ecological
c) case control
d) cohort
e) cross sectional
f) case series
g) experimental (clinical/community trial)

Answer 2

a) descriptive
b) both
c) analytic
d) analytic
e) both
f) descriptive
g) analytic

Question 3

1. What is an outcome?
2. What is an exposure?

Answer 3

1. the event you are interested in studying: can be a disease, defect, injury, event, state etc.
2. determinant of interest which an outcome depends on. Can be environmental behavioural etc.

Question 4

1. T/F: communication of findings should not occur if no association was found
2. T/F: there is not good or bad type of design but poorly vs properly conducted studies
3. T/F: case series and case reports are where the most health research is generated

Answer 4

1. F. even with no association, the findings should be communicated
2. T.
3. F. most health research is generated in case control and cohort studies –> because there are GROUPS being compared rather than individual cases

Question 5

What is the difference between case report and case series?

Answer 5

case report = reporting a health issue in ONE patient
case series = report that describes a group of individuals that have the SAME health issue

Question 6

What are signs vs symptoms?

Answer 6

signs = OBJECTIVE indication of disease that can be clinically OBSERVED –> rash, cough, fever, elevated blood pressure
symptoms = SUBJECTIVE indication of illness that is EXPERIENCED by an individual but cannot be OBSERVED by others –> what ever the patient notices/experiences. Ex: stomach pain, increased anxiety, inability to focus

Question 7

1. What are the 2 types of analytic studies? Explain
2. What are examples of the 2 types of analytic studies?

Answer 7

Experimental = investigator (researcher) manipulates which groups receive the thing that is being studied (ex: a drug). Ex = clinical trial, community trial

Observational = investigator observes as nature takes its course. Ex = cross-sectional, cohort study, case-control study

Question 8

1. What are cross-sectional studies? What is another word for this type of study?
2. T/F: repeated cross sectional studies track the same individuals forward in time

Answer 8

1. a group of people are examined at one point in time. AKA prevalence studies
2. F. a new set of participants are sampled from the source pop for each round of data collection

Question 9

Because a cross-sectional study has no time dimension, it cannot be used to assess _________ What does this mean?

Answer 9

casualty. Cross sectional studies can show that an exposure is related or associated with a disease but it cannot say that it CAUSED the disease!

Question 10

1. In correlational studies the unit of analysis is the _______ not the __________
2. T/F: correlational studies are often called ecological or aggregate studies

Answer 10

1. group, individual
2. T

Question 11

what is ecological fallacy?

Answer 11

the incorrect assumption that individuals follow the same trends observed in population level data –> experience of individuals can vary from what was observed in a population