Quiz 1 (Public Health)

Mixed Method Research

Using both qualitative and quantitative data to understand something

Qualitative data is helpful for these three factors that influence health outcomes

Cultural, social, and contextual

Quantitative data is helpful for these three things

Quantifying the prevalence of a health issue, identifying risk factors assessing the effectiveness of interventions

Research design process (9 steps)

1. Identify the problem and define a question/specific aims/hypothesis

2. Review literature

3. Revise question/aims/hypothesis

4. Select study design

5. Plan data analysis

6. Develop and submit the project description to an Institutional Review Board for approval

7. Collect data

8. Analyze data

9. Present results

Descriptive Research and what it can be used for

Providing a detailed account and summary of the characteristics, behaviors, or patterns within a given population.

Prevalence of a disease, distribution of health behaviors, and demographics of a community

Exploratory research

Investigating new and uncharted areas within public health. Goal is to provide pathways for future research.

Identifying potential risk factors

Relational and casual research

Aims to explain the relationship between variables and investigate if changing a variable modifies a behavior. Helps us understand how interventions impact health

PICOT

Patient/Population/Problem (who/what)

Intervention (action/treatment that will be tested)

Comparison/Control (what you are comparing to)

Outcome (what is the desired result)

Time Frame (how long to reach the outcome)

Specific aims

The purpose of a specific research study that establishes well defined parameters

Generalizability

the capacity of a study’s methods to produce comparable results across different populations and contexts. This is why random sampling is important, otherwise findings can’t be applied to a larger population.

Phenomenology

Seeks to uncover the essence of phenomenon’s experienced by people

Grounded theory

Aims to develop theories grounded in the data collected, allowing new concepts and insights to emerge

True or False: Study design choice is crucial to conducting a study that meets the specific aims

True

True or False: research questions have to be entirely novel

False - research can sometimes be replicated in a new population

Randomized controlled trials

Randomly assigning individuals to an intervention or control group

Single Blind

Participants do not know which treatment they are receiving

Double blind

Participants and the researchers don’t know who is receiving what treatment

Saturation

When new data ceases to provide additional insights or perspectives. This means the researcher has gathered a sufficiently rich amount of information.

Privacy/Confidentiality and who ensures it

protection of personal information, ensuring the participants choose what information they want to share, no identifying information is shared. Ethical guidelines and IRBs are responsible for providing protection through evaluation research protocols.

Descriptive statistics

summarizes key features. Central tendencies, variability, distribution of variables, means, max/min, graphing, tables

Inferential statistics

allows researchers to make inferences and draw conclusions based on a sample of data.

Hypothesis testing, regression analysis, analysis of variance

Spatial analysis

Helps researchers examine geographic patterns of health outcomes and explore potential environmental/social determinants

Data immersion

Researchers familiarizing themselves with the data through repeated readings/viewings

Coding

Labeling and categorizing segments of data based on recurring themes or concepts

True or False: statistics has developed various concepts that can indicate the quality of a study or test the degree of certainty that can be expected of its results

True

In order for screening tests to be beneficial they need to be:

highly sensitive and highly specific

Statistics are used in public health to analyze the following situations: (3 things)

Risks, benefits, and costs

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

the primary agency that collects, analyzes, and reports data on the health of Americans. They collect data from local and state records and they conduct surveys

True or false: contradictory results from epidemiologic studies are uncommon

False

Overdiagnosis bias

when tumors detected by screening are not likely to progress to a stage that causes symptoms and becomes life threatening

Crude rate

Raw exact rate

Adjusted rate

Adjusts the rate with a statistical calculation to be able to compare two rates with equivalence

Vital statistics

Birth, death, marriage, divorce, spontaneous fetal deaths, and abortions

American Community Survey

Collects information about education, housing, employment, transportation, language, ancestry, and more

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey

A self-reported survey conducted by the federal government that obtains information on health-related behaviors

Publication bias

trials with positive results were published but trials with negative results were not

Cohort study

Asking a large group of people detailed questions, tracking them for 5 years, and comparing them with another group that has been living a different kind of lifestyle

Case control study

Interviewing two different types of people and trying to determine what causes their differences

Selection bias

When the control group is too similar to the treatment group

Recall bias

When the case and control groups systematically report data differently even if they had the same exposure

YPLL

Years of potential life lost. Measures premature mortality

Epidemiology

The study of patterns of disease occurrence in human populations and the factors that influence these patterns.

Endemic rate

The anticipated level of a disease in a population

John Snow

He figured out that cholera was tied to drinking water by analyzing where cholera deaths occurred and determining where each household received their water from.

Epidemiological surveillance

Requiring certain notifiable diseases to be reported as soon as they are diagnosed. This allows providers to take action.

Tuberculosis, hepatitis, measles, and syphilis

Epidemiologic Investigation

Determining where a disease outbreak originated. The who, what, where, and when. Also known as shoe leather epidemiology.

Incubation period

The period of time between exposure and the appearance of symptoms

This disease has been the leading cause of death in the US since the 1920s

heart disease

Epidemiologists use this to study and measure health

Health outcomes, not disease and illness

Incidence

The rate of new cases of a disease in a defined population over a specified period. The probability that a healthy person will get that disease

Prevalence

The total number of causes in a defined population during a specific time period

Descriptive epidemiology, prospective studies, and retrospective studies

Generates hypotheses that formal epidemiologic studies aim to confirm or disprove.

Happen in the present and monitor groups into the future

Dive into the past to identfy causes of diseases that currently affect people

Intervention Studies

Laboratory experiments that aim to assess the efficacy of a new treatment or preventive measure

For a drug to be considered effective it has to have:

a higher response rate than the placebo

Relative Risk

The ratio of the incidence rate for persons exposed to the factor to the incidence rate for persons in the unexposed groups. Risk of 1 means there is no association between exposure and result. Greater thank 1 indicates an increased risk

Case Control Studies

Starting with people who are already ill and looking back in time to determine their exposure. Tend to be more efficient than cohort studies because they focus on fewer people.

Odds ratio

A ratio of two ratios that estimates the strength of the association between exposure and disease