Epidemiology Study Notes

To study the distribution and determinants of health-related states in populations.

Describing the distribution of diseases by time, place, and person.

Generate hypotheses about disease causation.

Characteristics of individuals (e.g., age, sex).

Establish cause-and-effect relationships between exposures and health outcomes.

Describes the occurrence and patterns of health events in populations by time, place, and person.

Identifying and quantifying associations, testing hypotheses, and identifying causes of health-related states.

Describing health events in a population in terms of time, place, and person.

Analytic epidemiology is the epidemiological approach most directly involved in testing hypotheses about the factors associated with disease.

In descriptive epidemiology, data are primarily collected to generate hypotheses, not test them.

An epidemiological case is an instance of a particular disease or health condition in an individual.

A clear case definition is crucial in epidemiology to accurately count disease occurrences.

A case definition typically includes clinical criteria (signs and symptoms), time period of occurrence, location, and other relevant factors to identify a particular case of disease.

Caseness refers to the criteria or threshold that define a person as a case of a particular disease.

Sensitivity of a case definition refers to its ability to correctly identify true positive cases of the disease.