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PHC 6000m
Introduction to epidemiology
Question | Answer |
---|---|
How are prevalence and incidence related? | If a population is steady, prevalence = incidence x time |
What is the difference between cumulative incidence and incidence density (also called incidence rate)? | |
What is the difference between incidence density and incidence rate? | They are the same |
What is another phrase for incidence rate? | Incidence density |
Describe a scenario in which only one or two cases of disease may represent an epidemic. | |
Which is more important in clinical medicine: sensitivity or specificity? | Sensitivity |
Which is more important in public health: sensitivity or specificity? | Specificity |
Which approach to medicine is more concerned about treatment of patient? | Clinical medicine |
Which approach to medicine is more concerned about causation and etiopathogenesis? | Public health |
Incidence or prevalence: Number of campers who developed gastroenteritis within 24 hours after eating potato salad at the dining hall. | Incidence |
Incidence or prevalence: Number of persons who reported having hypertension as part of National Health Interview Survey. | Prevalence |
Incidence or prevalence: Occurrence of Acute Myocardial Infarction in participants during the first 10 years of follow-up in Framingham heart study. | Prevalence |
What type of trial is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a substance (such as vaccine) or a prevention program (such as vitamin supplementation) that is used to prevent a disease? | Prophylactic |
What type of trial involves the study of curative drugs or a new surgical procedure to evaluate how well they bring about an improvement in a patient's health? | Therapeutic |
What are the four stages of evaluation? | Formative, process, outcome, and impact |
What type of evaluation measures 'whatever changes the program creates in the target population's knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, or behavior'? | Impact |
What type of treatment refers to, 'whatever changes of treatment for a patient in a clinical trial involving a switch of study treatments.' | Cross-over |
What is a planned experiment designed to assess the efficacy of a treatment in man by comparing the outcomes in a group of patients treated with test treatment with those observed in a comparable group of patients receiving control treatment? | Clinical trial |
To reduce the likelihood of biased assessment, which design technique is used? | Double blinding; neither the subject nor the researcher is aware of group assignment |
Which aspect of study design describes wherein the subject is not aware of his/her group assignment of placebo or treatment? | Blinding |
What does blinding seek to alleviate? | Bias in study results |
What is the difference between an RCT and quasi-experiment? | In an RCT, population is randomly allocated into groups. In a quasi-experiment, investigator manipulates the study factor but does not assign individuals randomly to treatment groups. |
Increases and decreases in the frequency of diseases and health conditions over a period of years or within a year. | Cyclic fluctuations |
These studies are concerned with characterizing the amount and distribution of disease within a population. | Descriptive studies |
Refers to joining data from two or more sources, for example, employment records and mortality data. | Record linkage |
A study design that is well suited to examine the prevalence of disease and inform resource allocation. | Cross-sectional study |
With this study design, you can only look at exposures that are thought to be beneficial. | Randomized control trial |
On August 21, 1996, the federal government enacted the law. This law protects individually identifiable health information. | HIPAA |
Type of experimental design that greatly enhance the potential to make a widespread impact on population health. Example., Smoking cessation, weight loss, etc. | Community trial |
Is a statistical measure that is considered by many epidemiologists to be more meaningful than a point estimate. | Confidence interval |
An approach to estimating the effects due to the single exposure factor is to compute this. | Etiologic fraction |
What is the most important aim of a good informed consent form? | To obtain the informed consent of the participant |
Is it appropriate to include the names and contact details of other people who are also participating in the project in a research participants' informed consent form? | No |
Is it ethical to share your data with other organizations who have a legitimate interest in your research? | No |
What is the over-riding principle governing ethical research behavior? | To protect research participants and their communities from harm |
Apart form damage to individuals, how else can research damage people? | By creating stereotypes (for groups) |
How can individuals involved in research be protected from damage? | 1) By gaining their consent 2) By avoiding details which could identify a place or organization 3) By being anonymous |
What is the most appropriate measure of association to use in a cohort study where there is significant loss to follow-up? | Incidence density ratio (NOT incidence density which is not a measure of association) takes into account person time at risk, and therefore better captures time in the study. This better captures the true time at risk within your study population. |
When are cumulative incidence and incidence incidence similar? | |
If a study had doubled the sample size, what would you expect the impact on the confidence interval to be? | Narrower |
What two factors influence the positive predictive value of a screening test in most situations? | Specificity and prevalence of the condition |
What are reasons that researchers may choose older subjects (55+) when it comes to investigating lung cancer? | 1) Lung cancer takes a while to develop 2) If they included younger people, may have also gotten genetic cases (which they don't want) |
What is the difference between an outbreak, and epidemic, and a pandemic? | An “outbreak” and an “epidemic” essentially mean the same thing to an epidemiologist, but the term “epidemic” has a more serious connotation than “outbreak” and is used less frequently to avoid the perception of a crisis situation. |
What is a cluster? | Refers to a group of cases in a specific time and place that may or may not be greater than normal |