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Mother and Child Health: Research Methods

Mother and Child Health: Research Methods. G.J.Ebrahim Editor Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Oxford University Press. Preparing Case Series. All cases admitted in the time period must be included. One needs: Precise Inclusion and exclusion criteria

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Mother and Child Health: Research Methods

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  1. Mother and Child Health: Research Methods G.J.Ebrahim Editor Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Oxford University Press.

  2. Preparing Case Series • All cases admitted in the time period must be included. One needs: • Precise Inclusion and exclusion criteria • What intervention was carried out for each patient, their progress and the outcome. • Influence of all variables should be accounted for. • Follow a pre-planned protocol. Give thought to how missing values, drop-outs and out-migration are to be handled. • Temporal drift is a constant danger if series need to be collected over a long time.

  3. Cross-sectional Studies • Cross-sectional studies are studies of prevalence. Proportion with an attribute or disease / Number of subjects = Prevalence. • 3 important questions to consider: • Definition of Case • Definition of the Population • Are cases and non-cases from an unbiased sample of the population?

  4. Preparing Cross-sectional Studies • In Cross-sectional studies think of: • Sampling Procedures. • Clear definition of Target Population. • Clear definition of outcome. • Clear definition of risk factors. • Remember Confounders. • Remember seasonal variations.

  5. Advantages Useful for descriptive studies Rapid, inexpensive, can provide analytic clues. Less prone to error about exposure recall and bias Disadvantages Unable to sort out what came first exposure or outcome Prone to sample distortion bias. Advantages and Disadvantages of Cross- sectional Studies

  6. Main uses of Cross-sectional Studies • Identify and describe a problem. • Collect information for planning e.g. surveys of immunisation, antenatal care, coverage. • Evaluate utilisation rates of services. • Monitoring health status of a community by regular repeated surveys.

  7. Using Cross-sectional Studies for Hypotheses Formulation Method of Difference. If frequency of a disease is markedly different between two groups then it is likely to be caused by a particular factor that differs between them. Method of Agreement. If a factor commonly occurs in which a disease occurs with high frequency then the factor is very likely associated with the disease. Concomitant variation. Frequency of a factor varies in proportion to frequency of disease.

  8. Surveys Surveys are a form of cross-sectional studies used for: • Assessing attitudes, opinions or beliefs • To study characteristics of populations regarding behaviour e.g. health service utilisation; drug use; smoking; alcohol consumption etc. • Information about socio-demographic characteristics

  9. Modification of Cross-sectional Studies - I Trend Design Future Sampling Population Risk Factor Present Disease Prevalence Risk Factor Sampling Disease Prevalence

  10. Modification of Cross-sectional Studies - II Panel Design Present Future Risk Factor Risk Factor Population Disease Prevalence Disease Prevalence Same Sample Sample

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