Topic:
Cohort Studies and Dealing With
Large Existing Database cohorts
Faculty:
Joann Elmore
Darcy Thompson
Session Goals:
Understand what types of research questions can be answered with existing data bases
Address the limitations and difficulties in data base research
Learn what health related data bases are available
Definitions:
Data base research: Using existing databases to obtain quantitative answers to health services questions
Cohort Study: (Syn: concurrent, follow-up, longitudinal, prospective study) The method of epidemiological study in which subsets of a defined population can be identified who are, have been, or in the future may be exposed or not exposed, or exposed to different degrees, to a factor or factors hypothesized to influence the probability of occurrence of a given disease or other outcome. The alternative terms for a cohort study, i.e., follow-up, longitudinal and prospective study, describe an essential feature of the method, which is observation of the population for a sufficient number of person-years to generate reliable incidence or mortality rates in the populations subsets. This generally implies study of a large population, study for a prolonged period (years), or both.
[Definition from: Last, JM (ed). A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, New York, 1988.]
Suggested Readings:
Hennekens CH and Buring JE. Chapter 7, “Cohort Studies” in Epidemiology in Medicine. 1st Edition. Little, Brown and Company, 1987.
Other References:
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~hsic/resources/datasets.html (something broken - will repair soon)
Hulley & Cummings, Designing Clinical Research, Chapter 6 and 7 (in which the backwards process of finding research questions to fit the data and other curios are deliberated …)
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Last Updated: 06/30/05
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