Keywords: epidemiology, clinical research, design, cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, cohort studies, role of chance, individual risks; public health surveillance, vaccination investigation, effectiveness and impact.
Learning outcomes:
Student are intended to: use and explain the basic terminology and principles used in epidemiology; distinguish between, and apply, the different measures of frequency, association and impact that are commonly used in epidemiological research; calculate these measures using simple numerical examples; tell apart and explain the different aspects of epidemiological research (causal and descriptive); tell apart and state the (dis)advantages of the different study designs used in epidemiological research: cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies; read and interpret (simple) epidemiological scientific papers, and recognise in these papers which study design was used; apply the correct measures of frequency and association belonging to the different epidemiological study designs; explain the meaning of the terms ‘bias’ and ‘confounding’ and distinguish between them; choose, justify and execute the appropriate epidemiological study set up.
