What is a reference population in a case-control study?

What is a reference population in a case-control study?

A study base, also called a reference population, is a defined population whose disease experience during some period of time is the source of the study data. This population gives rise to cases.

How do you conduct a case-control study?

Five steps in conducting a case-control study

  1. Define a study population (source of cases and controls)
  2. Define and select cases.
  3. Define and select controls.
  4. Measure exposure.
  5. Estimate disease risk associated with exposure.
  6. Confounding factors.
  7. Matching.
  8. Bias.

What is the difference between case-control and cohort study?

Whereas the cohort study is concerned with frequency of disease in exposed and non-exposed individuals, the case-control study is concerned with the frequency and amount of exposure in subjects with a specific disease (cases) and people without the disease (controls).

How do you find the controls in a case-control study?

Selection of the Controls

  1. The comparison group (“controls”) should be representative of the source population that produced the cases.
  2. The “controls” must be sampled in a way that is independent of the exposure, meaning that their selection should not be more (or less) likely if they have the exposure of interest.

Are case-control studies qualitative?

Experiments done in a laboratory will almost certainly be quantitative. In a health care context, randomised controlled trials are quantitative in nature, as are case-control and cohort studies.

How does a case control sampling strategy work?

With a case-control sampling strategy one simply takes a sample of the population in order to obtain an estimate of the exposure distribution within the population that gave rise to the cases. Obviously, this is a much more efficient design.

What do you mean by case control study?

Case Control Studies A case-control study is a type of observational study commonly used to look at factors associated with diseases or outcomes. The case-control study starts with a group of cases, which are the individuals who have the outcome of interest. The researcher then tries to construct a second group of indiv …

How are case and control groups selection different?

Control group selection. However, because the difference between the cases and the controls will be smaller, this results in a lower power to detect an exposure effect. As with any epidemiological study, greater numbers in the study will increase the power of the study. Numbers of cases and controls do not have to be equal.

How are case control studies used in dynamic populations?

The underlying theory for case–control studies in dynamic populations has been developed in epidemiological and statistical journals and textbooks over several decades, 2–19 and its history has been described. 20 Still, the theory is not well known or well understood outside professional epidemiological and statistical circles.