Deck 2: Epidemiologic Research Methods

Question 1

The _____ of a disease reflects the total number of affected women at one point in time, including newly diagnosed cases and those with longer histories of the disease.

A) biologic gradient
B) Population Attributable Risk (PAR)
C) incidence
D) prevalence

Answer 1

D

Question 2

John Snow has been credited with founding epidemiology because, through careful investigations, he identified that _____.

A) rat fleas caused the bubonic plague
B) cigarette smoking was a primary cause of lung cancer
C) cases of puerperal fever were being caused by contamination from an autopsy laboratory
D) contaminated water caused a cholera outbreak

Answer 2

D

Question 3

What type of study involves collecting data uniformly from women with a newly diagnosed condition and unaffected women by personal interview or extensive mailed questionnaire, with questions based on prior research or hypotheses, asking about exposures and life events preceding diagnosis among cases and during a comparable time interval for controls?

A) case-case study
B) case-control study
C) ecologic study
D) cross-sectional study

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Which of the following estimates the strength of the relationship, if one exists, between a defined risk factor and a disease?

A) confounding factor
B) odds ratio
C) relative risk
D) absolute risk

Question 5

The statistical technique known as _____ provides a means for combining research findings from diverse study populations, and is used to obtain a summary estimate from individual published studies.

A) length bias
B) meta-analysis
C) absolute risk
D) temporality

Question 6

If 15 women out of a group of 45 women truly test positive for a condition, 5 falsely test positive, 5 falsely test negative, and the remaining 20 truly test negative, what is the positive predictive value?

A) 15/35 or 43%
B) 15/20 or 75%
C) 20/25 or 80%
D) 20/20 or 100%

Question 7

The size of the population has little bearing on the probability of finding a statistically significant relationship between risk factors and disease outcomes if one truly exists.

Question 8

Hospital-based study recruitment is preferred for epidemiologic studies.

Question 9

The genetic factors that affect exposure-disease associations may differ within families.

Question 10

Observational studies are considered essential for assessment of health behaviors and clinical outcomes that ethically cannot be randomly assigned for experimental investigations.

Question 11

Calculated relative risks greater than 1.0 indicate an increased likelihood of disease associated with the risk factor.

Question 12

What are the goals of tertiary prevention?

Question 13

List five sources of population-based data used in epidemiology studies.

Question 14

List five of the criteria used to guide evaluation of causal inference in epidemiologic studies.

Question 15

Why do some investigators and journalists caution against quick acceptance of early study results?