Deck 9: Case-Control Studies

Question 1

Registry systems have been developed mainly for which medical conditions?

A) HIV and cancer
B) HIV and birth defects
C) Cancer and birth defects
D) Cancer and infectious diseases

Answer 1

Cancer and birth defects

Question 2

Which of the following is the primary goal of an epidemiological study, which should never be sacrificed?

A) Validity
B) Reliability
C) Confounding
D) Generalizability

Answer 2

Validity

Question 3

The fulfillment of which concept is crucial to the validity of a case-control study?

A) Case ascertainment
B) Would criterion
C) Confounding
D) Selection bias

Answer 3

Would criterion

Question 4

Today, most epidemiologists discourage the use of which type of controls because these controls may not be a representative sample of the source population that produced the cases?

A) Dead controls
B) Population controls
C) Hospital or clinic controls
D) Friend, spouse, and relative controls

Question 5

One method for identifying which type of controls is through random digit dialing, which is a method for identifying a random sample of telephone subscribers living in a defined geographic area?

A) Dead controls
B) Population controls
C) Hospital or clinic controls
D) Friend, spouse, and relative controls

Question 6

Which type of sampling is the predominant method of selecting controls in traditional case-control studies?

A) Cluster sampling
B) Survivor sampling
C) Case-base sampling
D) Risk set sampling

Question 7

In case-control studies, which of the following serve as the most commonly used source of exposure data?

A) Biomarkers
B) Medical records
C) Questionnaires
D) Death certificates

Question 8

The goal of a case-control study is identical to that of any other epidemiological study, the valid and precise measurement of the relationship between an exposure and disease.

Question 9

A case-control study is more efficient than a cohort study when the disease is rare, which is usually defined as a frequency of 20% or less.

Question 10

Researchers who study the causes of disease prefer prevalent cases because they are usually interested in the factors that lead to developing the disease rate than the factors that affect the duration of the disease.

Question 11

Because of the manner in which what type of controls are identified, investigators are usually assured that they come from the same base population as the cases do?

A) Dead controls
B) Population controls
C) Hospital or clinic controls
D) Friend, spouse, and relative controls

Question 12

Control-to-case ratios of up to which value help to increase the power of the study?

A) 4 to 1
B) 6 to 1
C) 8 to 1
D) 10 to 1

Question 13

Which sampling approach involves longitudinally sampling controls throughout the follow-up period?

A) Cluster sampling
B) Survivor sampling
C) Case-base sampling
D) Risk set sampling

Question 14

When which type of sampling is used, the odds ratio estimates the risk ratio in the base population?

A) Cluster sampling
B) Survivor sampling
C) Case-base sampling
D) Risk set sampling

Question 15

Which type of study was developed for situations "when brief exposure causes a transient change in risk of a rare-acute onset disease"?

A) Ecological studies
B) Case-control studies
C) Cross-sectional studies
D) Case-crossover studies

Question 16

The period of increased risk following the exposure is referred to as which of the following?

A) Latent period
B) Hazard period
C) Critical period
D) Induction period

Question 17

Which of the following represents the main strength of case-control studies?

A) Precision
B) Accuracy
C) Efficiency
D) Generalizability

Question 18

Case-control studies are preferable when little is known about the disease because they allow the investigators to evaluate more than one hypothesis.

Question 19

Follow-up is avoided in a case-control study because it is retrospective.

Question 20

A case-control study must include all cases of disease occurring within a defined population.