Kinesiology 1070A/B Lecture 6: 6
16 Oct 2018
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Incidence/occurrence: rate of new disease or health events. Research is observational, not experimental: epidemiologists take advantage of common human practice and use it to find a correlation with certain diseases. Why is it important: virtually the only way in which a quantitative understanding of the exposure-disease relationship can be obtained. Important: disease rates in cohort studies are often expressed relative to person years of follow- up. Defining characteristic is the element of time. The direction of time is always forward. (baseline follow up (number of years)) Terms like prospective and longitudinal studies have all been used to describe the cohrt study design. Often the group of individuals will have some disease, in which case the question will be directing at the causes of their disease. Types pf studies typically look for treatments which reduce event rates. Studies select a set of patients with a defining characteristic: a diagnosed disease.
