Objectives

The overall objective is for students to understand epidemiological investigation, especially in the area of disease etiology, including genetic factors.  The course concentrates on observational research rather than experimental research.  Due to the nature of observational studies, validity is considered to be the most important issue in epidemiology.  We will discuss how to avoid bias, to control confounding and to detect effect modification at study design and data analysis stages. You will develop critical appraisal skills (important in reviewing published literature and in proposals for new studies, including your own!), and an understanding of the principles of causal inference.

It is NOT an objective that students would be able to actually design a research project - that will require additional study.  However, you should be able to participate in a meaningful way in the development of a research project in collaboration with other investigators.  You should also be able to critically appraise published reports in order to determine their value and meaning.  Within this broad goal, students will be addressing the following objectives:

• To develop the attitude that data drives conclusions, not the other way around;
• To be able to tell good from bad research;
• To be aware of sources of data about the health status of Canadians, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of this data;
• To understand the basic approaches to epidemiological research and be able to describe the advantages and disadvantages of the various design options;
• To understand the major threats to the validity of epidemiologic research and to be able to apply basic strategies to preventing and adjusting for these problems.
• To be able to define and use the main measures of mortality, morbidity and study group comparison.

DETAILED OBJECTIVES FOR EACH LECTURE

I have prepared detailed objectives and reading lists for each course session. These can be found be clicking on the session number in the following table.

Access to session specific objectives

Session 1 (Sept 14): Introduction to course	Session 2 (Sept 21): Disease classification. Measures of Mortality.	Session 3 (Sept 28): The primary study designs. Descriptive Epidemiology..	Session 4 (Oct 5): Incidence, Prevalence. Comparing groups
Session 5 (Oct 12): NO CLASS (Thanksgiving)	Session 6 (Oct 19): Causation. Study validity.	Session 7 (Oct 26): Infectious Disease Epidemiology.	Session 8 (Nov 2): Screening. Epidemiological trends in Canada.
Session 9 (Nov 9): Bias.  Confounding: Concepts.	Session 10 (Nov 16): Methods of controlling confounding.	Session 11 (Nov 23): Cohort studies. Estimating population impact.	Session 12 (Nov 30): Case-control studies.
Session 13 (Dec 7): Incidence estimation and related topics.	Session 14 (Dec 14): Special types of case-control studies. Conceptual ideas of logistic regression.

 

HANDOUTS: Prepared by Dr. Birkett

Several years ago, I prepared short handouts for this course to address key analytic issues. The purpose of the handouts was to assemble, in one simple place, the key information for the analysis of 2x2 tables which are commonly used in epidemiology. The following handouts are available. Click on the handout name to access a PDF version. Note that these are not intended to replace a full statistical epidemiology book but rather to provide a source of information for simple situations. In particular, they make no attempt to provide methods to adjust for confounding.

Cumulative Incidence (Incidence Proportion, risk)
Incidence density (incidence rate)
Odds ratios
Matching in case-control studies
Attributable risk