![]() ![]() Controls are those patients that do not have the disease. Cases are patients who have a particular disease, condition, or disability. As the name suggests, there are two groups of patient cases and controls in a case-control study. Case-control studies can help identify beneficial or harmful exposures. ![]() ![]() The factors that affect the risk of a disease are called exposures. Ĭase-control studies are used to determine the degree of associations between various risk factors and outcomes. The observation can be prospective, retrospective, or current, depending on the subtype of an observational study. As the name indicates, observational studies involve merely observing the patients in a non-controlled environment without actually interfering or manipulating with other aspects of the study and therefore are non-experimental. In several instances, an experimental study design may not be feasible or suitable observational studies are conducted in such situations. Being able to control various aspects of the experimental study design enables the researchers to identify causal links between interventions and outcomes of interest. In an experimental study design, researchers assign patients to intervention and control/comparison groups in an attempt to isolate the effects of the intervention. How the researcher conducts the investigation is directed by the chosen study design. The study designs can be broadly classified as experimental or observational based on the approach used to assess whether exposure and an outcome are associated. As a first step, they define the hypothesis based on the research question and then decide which study design will be best suited to answer that question. In epidemiology, researchers are interested in measuring or assessing the relationship of exposure with a disease or an outcome. ![]()
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