HLSC 2P27 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Confounding, Advanced Maternal Age, Relative Risk
6 Feb 2018
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But as you increase in birth order, your mother is older by definition. You see that risk of down syndrome increases with birth order. When you account for mother"s age, you see that older mothers have more cases of down syndrome. Because both affect the outcome, we don"t know which is affecting the outcome more. *maternal age is associated with the occurrence of down"s syndrome regardless of this child"s birth order. Association between birth order and down"s syndrome disappears when maternal age is accounted for. We approach the doctor with a 50/50 down"s mentality, but the relative risk is actually still relatively low. Evaluate - the existence of the confounding variables in each of the study groups. Measure - the confounding variable along with the independent and dependent variables to establish strength of relationship. Smoking causing cancer is plausible because the chemicals have negative effects on the lung.
