Introduction to the week
This week, we will consider different study designs and how the choices about how we collect data affects the information we can extract from the data. We also start looking at the concept of confounding, which is central to understanding both study design choices and interpretability of analytic results.
Readings
- Chapter 2 of the course notes
- Burns, Rohrich & Chung (2011) The Levels of Evidence and their role in Evidence-Based Medicine. https://www.doi.org/10.1097/PRS.0b013e318219c171.
- Howards (2018) An overview of confounding. Part 1: the concept and how to address it. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/aogs.13295
- Howards (2018) An overview of confounding. Part 2: how to identify it and special situations. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/aogs.13293