Deck 8: Epidemiological Methods in Sport and Exercise Science

Question 1

Which is NOT true about epidemiology?

A) Epidemiology is the study of the occurrence of health-related events and their determinants in human populations.
B) The objective of epidemiology is to develop effective methods of disease prevention that act directly on causal agents, factors, or determinants.
C) The goal of epidemiology is to discover facts essential or contributory to the occurrence of those affected by the disease under investigation.
D) The importance of epidemiological research is based on the great impact that disease and injury have on society.

Answer 1

The goal of epidemiology is to discover facts essential or contributory to the occurrence of those affected by the disease under investigation.

Question 2

Which is NOT a personal attribute that manifests itself in the host?

A) Genetic factors
B) Immune status
C) Physical activity behavior
D) Social class

Answer 2

Genetic factors

Question 3

Which is the measure defined as number of persons who have an attribute/disease at a particular time divided by the population at risk of having an attribute/disease at this point in time?

A) Incidence rate
B) Prevalence rate
C) Relative rate
D) Odds ratio

Answer 3

Prevalence rate

Question 4

Which is the measure defined as number of exposed cases/number of unexposed cases divided by number of exposed controls/number of unexposed controls?

A) Incidence rate
B) Prevalence rate
C) Relative rate
D) Odds ratio

Question 5

Which is the study design in which the relationship between health outcomes and other factors of interest is examined within a defined population at one particular time?

A) Case-control study
B) Prospective cohort study
C) Cross-sectional study
D) Randomized controlled study

Question 6

Which is NOT true of the cross-sectional study design?

A) A cross-sectional study design is when the relationship between health outcomes and other factors of interest is examined within a defined population at one particular time.
B) The cross-sectional study design is the most convincing study design in epidemiology.
C) Because this approach is analogous to the snapshot in photography, proper temporal sequence is not provided.
D) An application of the cross-sectional study design is to determine the prevalence of selected conditions and health behaviors for the purpose of public health planning and surveillance.

Question 7

Which is NOT true of temporality?

A) Temporality is defined as the timing between the proposed cause and a lower rate of disease or injury.
B) For temporality to help with identifying causality in epidemiological studies, the control and intervention groups have to be at the same health level from the onset of the study.
C) For temporality to help with identifying causality in epidemiological studies, the measurement of the outcome, such as activity, must precede the measurement of subsequent events of disease or death.
D) For temporality to help with identifying causality in epidemiological studies, it is important to determine whether an association, for instance between fitness and disease rates, holds as time passes.

Question 8

Which is NOT one of the factors cited as the checklist for causality in epidemiological studies?

A) Sensitivity
B) Dose of response
C) Plausibility
D) Coherence

Question 9

What is true of the odds ratio? Select all that apply.

A) An odds ratio exceeding 1 is interpreted as conveying greater risk or a greater likelihood of an outcome.
B) Odds ratio is defined as the ratio of the rate in a population subgroup exposed to an agent that is believed to cause a disease, injury, or death to the rate in a population subgroup not exposed.
C) Another name for odds ratio is cross-product ratio.
D) Odds ratio is a close approximation of relative risk.

Question 10

What is true of epidemiological studies? Select all that apply.

A) The application of epidemiology requires knowledge of causal factors relative to the occurrence of specific health events in order to determine cause and effect.
B) Often epidemiological studies are observational and cross-sectional in design.
C) Epidemiological studies borrow from many disciplines, such as biostatistics, biology, and anthropology, and combines them into one viable science.
D) Knowledge of causal factors is often based on biostatistics to reveal measures of associations between causal factors and specific health events.

Question 11

What is true of cross-sectional studies? Select all that apply.

A) Cross-sectional data is considered new data (i.e., collected after the disease or injury).
B) The challenge of cross-sectional data is not knowing whether the relationship existed before the injury or disease or as a consequence of the disease.
C) With cross-sectional data, it could be possible there is no relationship between the data and the disease.
D) Cross-sectional data must have existed before the disease or injury (i.e., historical data).

Question 12

What is true about the discipline of epidemiology? Select all that apply.

A) Epidemiology is the study of the occurrence of health-related events and their determinants in human populations.
B) The objective of epidemiology is to develop effective methods of disease prevention that act directly on causal agents, factors, or determinants.
C) The goal of epidemiology is to discover facts essential or contributory to the occurrence of those affected by the disease under investigation.
D) The importance of epidemiological research is the great impact that disease and injury have on society.

Question 13

What is true of the web of causation? Select all that apply.

A) It is understood that the web may be sufficiently altered by an attack at one link that may render prevention efforts less effective.
B) The web of causation can be defined such that the effect may be the result of a complex interaction of causes, with the understanding that not every effect is the result of a single cause.
C) An important principle of epidemiology is that for effective public health interventions to be carried out, they require a complete understanding of the web of causation.
D) It is possible that additional unexpected side effects may occur, thus obscuring the relationships within the web of causation.

Question 14

What are the factors cited as the checklist for causality in epidemiological studies? Select all that apply.

A) Sensitivity
B) Dose of response
C) Plausibility
D) Coherence

Question 15

What is true of bias? Select all that apply.

A) Bias, as defined in this chapter, is conceptually the same as defined in previous chapters, thus bias transcends all types of research.
B) Bias occurs if the observed estimate of a measure tends to deviate from its true value.
C) Selection bias results from errors in classification of risk status or disease status.
D) Bias can be introduced a number of ways through selection, information, and the measurement being used.

Question 16

Odds ratio is defined as the ratio of the rate in a population subgroup exposed to an agent that is believed to cause a disease, injury, or death to the rate in a population subgroup not exposed.

Question 17

The application of epidemiology requires knowledge of causal factors relative to the occurrence of specific health events in order to determine cause and effect.

Question 18

In the epidemiological triad model, the factors associated with the host are age, gender, or race/ethnicity.

Question 19

Case-control data must have existed before the disease or injury (i.e., historical data).

Question 20

The web of causation can be defined such that the effect may be the result of a complex interaction of causes, so that the main cause can be isolated.

Question 21

Prevalence is the length of time the disease or injury remains exposed to risk or mitigating factors.

Question 22

Selection bias is caused by enrolling only certain subjects from a community when broader representation is desired.

Question 23

A cross-sectional study design is when the relationship between health outcomes and other factors of interest is examined within the population over time.

Question 24

Community-based or clinic-based interventions are based on the presumption that the associations found in epidemiological studies are causal rather than occurring by chance or through some bias.

Question 25

Coherence is the association between a proposed cause and the known biology and natural history of a disease.

Question 26

Consistency of association is the ability to explain the association between death and disease and a proposed cause.

Question 27

A negatively accelerating dose-response relationship is where larger benefits would occur at higher levels of, for instance, physical activity.

Question 28

Specificity of association is the requirement that the pattern of reduced risk seen with increasing levels of an agent must remain in the presence and in the absence of other potential causes of the disease.

Question 29

Because animal experiments allow for tight control (and as such, increase the validity of the research) and can confirm mechanisms in the absence of human population studies, this type of research ranks higher on the evidence pyramid.

Question 30

Plausibility is the ability to explain the association between death and disease and a proposed cause.

Question 31

The term that is defined as the ratio of the rate in a population subgroup exposed to an agent that is believed to cause a disease, injury, or death to the rate in a population subgroup not exposed is called ________________________.

Question 32

The term which is defined as a cause-and-effect relationship in which two events are very common and therefore are associated, but not in a causal way is called ________________________.

Question 33

The term that is defined as the requirement that a proposed cause produces similar effects across different conditions is called _____________________________________.

Question 34

The epidemiological triad includes ___________, _____________, and ________________.

Question 35

The term that is defined as a cause-and effect relationship in which the effect of one exposure on disease risk is modified by the presence of another exposure is called _________________________.

Question 36

The term that is defined as the measure of the number of new cases of disease or injury during a defined period of time, divided by the product of the number of persons monitored during the same time, is called ________________________.

Question 37

The most common form of attributable fraction is the proportion of cases in the population that occurred in a subgroup having the risk factor of interest is called _____________________.

Question 38

The study design that compares subjects with the disease with those absent of the disease and for differences between those two groups is called ________________________.

Question 39

The study design that follows a group of similar cohorts, who differ with respect to certain factors under study, to determine how these factors affect rates of a particular outcome is called ________________________.

Question 40

The term that is defined as the requirement that an association is not likely to be explainable by random or chance observation is called ________________________.