The Practice
Epidemiologists employ a range of study designs from the observational to experimental and generally categorized as descriptive, analytic (aiming to further examine known associations or hypothesized relationships), and experimental (a term often equated with clinical or community trials of treatments and other interventions). In observational studies, nature is allowed to “take its course”, as epidemiologists observe from the sidelines. Controversially, in experimental studies, the epidemiologist is the one in control of all of the factors entering a certain case study. Epidemiological studies are aimed, where possible, at revealing unbiased relationships between exposures such as alcohol or smoking, biological agents, stress, or chemicals to mortality or morbidity. The identification of causal relationships between these exposures and outcomes is an important aspect of epidemiology. Modern epidemiologists use informatics as a tool.
Observational studies have two components: descriptive, or analytical. Descriptive observations pertain to the “who, what, where and when of health-related state occurrence”. However, analytical observations deal more with the ‘how’ of a health-related event.
Experimental epidemiology contains three case types: randomized control trial (often used for new medicine or drug testing), field trial (conducted on those at a high risk of conducting a disease), and community trial (research on social originating diseases).
Unfortunately, many epidemiology studies conducted cause false or misinterpreted information to circulate the public. According to a class taught by professor Madhukar Pai MD, PhD at McGill, “…optimism bias is pervasive, most studies biased or inconclusive or false, most discovered true associations are inflated, fear and panic inducing rather than helpful; media-induced panic, cannot detect small effects; big effects are not to be found anymore”.
The term 'epidemiologic triad' is used to describe the intersection of Host, Agent, and Environment in analyzing an outbreak.
Read more about this topic: Epidemiology
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