Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example
Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example
To do this, they have to contact hospitals and physicians. This activity requires a vast amount of resources and staff in order to accomplish its objectives and goals.
a) The conclusion reached may be incorrect because proportional mortality was used when cause-specific mortality rates were needed. Cause specific rates are applied when calculating deaths from a specific disease (Polit, 2010). Proportionate mortality is applied when calculating the number of deaths in relation to the total deaths or all deaths (100%) Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example .
a) The number of deaths from lung cancer in carpenters in 1949–1960 was greater than the number of deaths from lung cancer in bricklayers during the same period. SMR is often used to study the mortality in a specific occupation. From the data, carpenters have a higher mortality than brick layers during the same period.
a)Reduce selection bias in the allocation of treatment. Treatment differences which are identified from nonrandomized trial designs possess methodological weaknesses. For example, cohort effects, selection bias and confounding. As such, the major purpose of a random assignment is to counter this methodological weakness.
a)Avoid observer and subject bias. A double blind experiment design tests a drug or treatment’s effect by using groups of control and experimental subjects whereby neither the investigators nor the subjects know which drug is being used on which group (Grove, 2007). Therefore, this design eliminates the issue of prejudgment which can distort the .
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• Relative Risk In the first unit, we talked about the concept of relative risk. Relative risk is the ratio of the probability of a health event in the exposed group to the probability of the event in the non-exposed group. It is be used to figure out how a factor relates to the health problem.Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example . Generally, if the ratio of relative risk is greater than 1, then we could say the likelihood for the exposed group suffering the health problem is higher than the non-exposed group and suggest the suspected risk factor is related to the health problem. While, the bigger the ratio, the more relevant between the risk factor and the health problem. [Lecturettee] How relative risk relates to biostatistics The relative risk is designed to determine how a risk factor relates to a health event. Considering the in-class example which want to find whether smoking is related to coronary heart disease (CHD), the experiment was set as recruiting 2 groups of people, one is consist of smokers and the other is consist of non-smokers. Researchers made surveillance on them for a period of time and then find out how many of them have CHD after the experiment period. Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example .The relative risk is the ratio of the rate of CHD for smokers to the rate of CHD for non-smokers. From this example, it could be found that calculating the relative risk relates to the functions of data collection, applying statistical techniques to the health problem and make conclusion
Epidemiology is the study of diseases in populations. According to the Australasian Epidemiological Association, the three main aims of epidemiology are: to describe disease patterns in human populations; to identify the causes of diseases (also known as aetiology); to provide data essential for the management, evaluation and planning of services for the prevention, control and treatment of disease. Biostatistics is the branch of statistics related to medical and health applications. Biostatistics underpins the methodologies used in epidemiological investigations and research. The discipline has professional epidemiologists and biostatisticians that provide teaching, research and consultancy services within the School of Public Health.
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What does an Epidemiologist or Biostatistician do?
Epidemiologists study the frequency and distribution of diseases within human populations and environments. In an epidemiological study, the investigators try to determine if any factor is associated with the health effect. Therefore, epidemiologists try to compare groups of people who are alike except for the risk factor under evaluation. Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example .
Biostatisticians develop and apply statistical methods to scientific research in health-related fields, including medicine, epidemiology, and public health. The role of the biostatistician is an important one, especially when it comes to designing studies and analysing data from research problems. Biostatisticians help formulate the scientific questions to be answered, determine appropriate sampling techniques, coordinate data collection procedures, and conduct statistical analyses to answer those scientific questions. Biostatisticians also play a very important role in the preparation of research material for publication. Epidemly and Biostats – Assignment Example.
