Power Points chapter
Class 2 – History and Uses of Epidemiology
Q: What is the definition of epidemiology?
A: The study of the distribution and determinants of disease and health states in populations.
Q: What are the 5Ws of epidemiology?
A: Who, Where, When, Why, What.
Q: What is the difference between medicine and epidemiology?
A: Medicine focuses on individuals; epidemiology focuses on populations.
Q: What are descriptive and analytic epidemiology?
A: Descriptive describes patterns (who, where, when); analytic investigates causes (why).
Q: Who is John Snow and what did he do?
A: Founder of modern epidemiology; identified water as the source of cholera in London using a spot map.
Q: What is a risk factor?
A: Behavior, exposure, or characteristic increasing disease risk.
Q: What are modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors?
A: Modifiable can be changed (e.g., diet); non-modifiable cannot (e.g., age).
Class 3 – Data Presentation
Q: What are the types of data used in epidemiology?
A: Qualitative (Nominal, Ordinal) and Quantitative (Continuous, Discrete, Dichotomous).
Q: What are measures of central tendency?
A: Mean, Median, Mode.
Q: What is standard deviation?
A: Measure of data spread from the mean.
Q: What is a histogram?
A: A graph displaying the frequency distribution of a continuous variable.
Q: What is a contingency table?
A: A table showing the relationship between two categorical variables.
Q: What is the difference between accuracy and precision?
A: Accuracy is how close a measurement is to the true value; precision is the consistency of repeated measurements.
Q: Name a common sampling method.
A: Simple random sample.
Class 4 – Statistics
Q: What is a parameter?
A: A number summarizing a population.
Q: What is a confidence interval?
A: A range estimating the population parameter with a certain confidence level (e.g., 95%).
Q: What is a null hypothesis (H0)?
A: The statement that there is no effect or association.
Q: What is a Type I error?
A: Rejecting a true null hypothesis.
Q: What is correlation?
A: Strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables.
Q: What is a chi-square test used for?
A: Testing independence between two categorical variables.
Class 5 – Measures of Disease Occurrence
Q: What is incidence?
A: Rate of new cases in a population over time.
Q: What is prevalence?
A: Proportion of existing cases in a population at a specific time.
Q: What is point prevalence?
A: Prevalence at a specific point in time.
Q: What is cumulative incidence (risk)?
A: Number of new cases / population at risk over a time period.
Q: What is attack rate?
A: Proportion of people who develop disease during an outbreak.
Q: What is case fatality rate?
A: Proportion of people with a disease who die from it.
Class 6 – Prevalence & Incidence
Q: How is incidence rate calculated?
A: New cases / person-time at risk.
Q: What is the relationship between prevalence and incidence?
A: Prevalence ≈ Incidence × Duration.
Q: How can prevalence increase while incidence decreases?
A: If disease duration increases (e.g., better treatments).
Class 7A – Age Standardization
Q: What is age standardization?
A: Adjusting rates to eliminate age differences when comparing populations.
Q: What is a crude rate?
A: Simple, unadjusted rate.
Q: What is a direct age adjustment?
A: Applying age-specific rates to a standard population.
Q: What is an indirect age adjustment?
A: Applying standard age-specific rates to a study population.
Class 7B – Data Sources
Q: What are examples of data sources in epidemiology?
A: U.S. Census, NHIS, NHANES, NVSS, BRFSS.
Q: What is the purpose of public health surveillance?
A: Ongoing data collection to monitor health events.
Q: What is the role of the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
A: Protect human subjects in research.
Q: What is big data in epidemiology?
A: Large, complex datasets used to analyze health patterns.
Class 8 – Descriptive Epidemiology
Q: What is descriptive epidemiology?
A: Study of disease distribution by person, place, and time.
Q: What are examples of person variables?
A: Age, sex, race, SES.
Q: What are examples of place variables?
A: International, urban-rural, localized patterns.
Q: What are examples of time variables?
A: Secular trends, seasonal trends, point epidemics, clustering.
Q: What are the types of descriptive studies?
A: Case reports, case series, cross-sectional studies.
Class 9 – Causality
Q: What is causality?
A: The relationship between a cause and an effect.
Q: What is a necessary cause?
A: A factor required for an outcome to occur.
Q: What is a sufficient cause?
A: A factor that alone can produce the outcome.
Q: What is a confounder?
A: A third variable causing a false association.
Q: What are Bradford Hill’s Criteria for Causality?
A: Strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment, analogy.
Q: What is the web of causation?
A: Model showing multiple interacting causes of disease.
Q: What is stochastic (probabilistic) causality?
A: Causality involving randomness and probability.