10:832:302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Randomized Controlled Trial, Blind Experiment, Cohort Study
30 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Clinical trials: the distinguishing characteristic of a clinical trial is that the investigator controls the exposure, whether the participant receives the drug/procedure or placebo is controlled, considered the gold standard because they most closely resemble a controlled experiment. Types of error: bias- means error in epidemiology. Article: how to know whether to believe a health study : generalizability, association versus causation, control groups, randomization, observational studies or non-experimental, validity and replication. Putting it into practice: nurses health study: prospective or cohort, non-clinical but common, observational, nurses health study: monitor disease rate/lifestyle factors in or between large groups. Then, hypotheses are inferred about what caused the differences in health outcomes of the population: shows associations not causations, example: women who used hrt had less heart disease. But cannot prove that hrt led to decreased disease: benefits of observational studies, examines distribution of diseases within/between populations, example: breast cancer unusual among japanese, but rates increase after two generations in the us.
