Exercises in Epidemiology PDF – Applying Principles and Methods
1.23 MB PDF
Preface
Th ere are a lot of texts that deal with the principles and methods of epidemiology. I’ve been a coauthor of one of these myself. All of the texts, to a greater or lesser extent, provide examples of real or hypothetical epidemiologic studies to illustrate a given principle or method. For many (probably most) readers of these books, the examples help to solidify an understanding of the topic at hand.
What the examples do not provide is the opportunity to consider, on one’s own, how a particular issue ought to be dealt with, or how a particular question should be addressed. The purpose of this book is to supplement the material contained in the textbooks in such a way that the reader is forced to: (1) identify situations in which the validity or accuracy of a particular design or analytic approach may be limited; and (2) determine how that limitation might be overcome. Such actions are just those that epidemiologists have to take when they are planning research or are reviewing that of others.
Th e key word in the preceding paragraph is supplement . The present book cannot stand alone as a means of learning about epidemiology, or even as a means of being introduced to the subject. My hope is that the exercises contained in it can extend the knowledge of students of epidemiology, and equip them more fully to deal with the real world problems and issues that they’ll encounter in their professional lives.
Th e book is organized into seven chapters, each of which contains a set of questions and answers to those questions. Any reader who believes a given answer is incomplete (or wrong!) is welcome to communicate with me (nweiss@uw.edu). With the reader’s permission, his/her suggestions will be posted on the “discussion” page of that section of the Oxford University Press website devoted to this book — perhaps with an additional comment from me. No doubt all readers of this portion of the website will benefit from learning of different viewpoints. To minimize the likelihood of an ambiguous question being
present in this book, or an incomplete or incorrect answer, I enlisted the help of the following persons to review parts of the draft manuscript: Peter Cummings, Paul Doria-Rose, Sarah Lowry, Amanda Phipps, Gaia Pocobelli, and Ali Rowhani-Rahbar. Th e contributions of each of them helped to make the chapters of the book that you are reading better than the draft chapters that they received from me.
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