Cohort Study
Step 1: Learning Objectives
- Apply the principles of cohort studies:
- Define population at risk of disease
- Define eligibility criteria for study participants
- Define exposure
- Define outcome
- Employ steps in data analysis of cohort studies to analyze the data:
- Administrative procedures before start of the study
- Calculate relative risk based on simple counts
- Calculate relative rate from person-year information
- Calculate relative risk in exposure subgroups
- Calculate standardized incidence ratio
- Explain your findings and discuss problems in data analysis:
- Reconcile the differences between relative risk and relative rate estimates
- Give your suggestions for carrying out this retrospective cohort study
- Analyze results of exposure subgroup analysis and suggest how they influence our certainty about the results of the study
- Discuss the value of age standardization
- Compare the values of crude and age-adjusted relative rates with standardized incidence ratio and explain the difference
- Design a prospective cohort study which would investigate the relationship between exposure and outcome
- Discuss the value of statistical data analysis for conclusions about causality of the exposure-outcome relationship