STUDIES
Epidemiologist – studies patterns in the occurrence of diseases
Cohort studies – follows a group of people over time to see who develops the risk and who doesn’t
Case-control studies – people with the disease are compared to people without
- Controls should be representative of the population from which the case group was drawn from
Features of a good study
- Clear aim
- Representative sample – otherwise selected bias occurs
- Consider people who are asked to do the study with people who respond (e.g. unemployed people may agree to day-time interviews but they may be [physically unhealthier than employed people who are working thus cannot do the interview)
- Proportion who drop out should be kept to a minimum so that the remaining are still representative of target population
- Valid + reliable results
- Control variables or else may influence outcome
- Repeatability + reproducibility
- Same method used
- Large sample