Epidemiology Final Jeopardy

The Basics

100

This is the third item that makes up the Epidemiologic Triangle: Host, Agent, and _____

Environment

200

This is the name of the father of Epidemiology and also a character on Game of Thrones.

John Snow

300

These are the two ways Epidemiologists read the literature. 

Passive and Critical reading

400

Together these make up a sufficient cause or causal mechanism.

Component causes or risk factors

500

This is the first step in the public health approach.

Identify the problem

Epi methods and studies

100

This spectrum is used to categorize research that contributes to changes in policy or practice

Translational research spectrum

200

RCTs are experimental studies, but epidemiologic studies are more often this type of study.

Observational

300

In this type of study, researchers follow a large group of people over several years collecting an analyzing data.

Cohort

400

A measure of new cases that does not account for time or other covariates.

Crude risk

500

The researcher chose this study design because she knew who had congestive heart failure and who did not and was interested in patients' exposure to high voltage power lines.  

Case-control study

Types of bias

100

Researchers are studying strength as a predictor of falls. Age has to be controlled for because it is this type of variable, associated with both muscle weakness and falls.

Confounder

200

This type of error would result if researchers used a bathroom scale that consistently weight participants 3.8lbs over their actual weight.

Systematic error 

300

This type of bias resulted when the research assistant attributed gender to participants based on her perception of participants rather than asking participants. 

Misclassification or information bias

400

This is unpredictable and can result from sampling variability.

Random error

500

If we don't account for the induction period, the association of our exposure with the outcome may appear weaker. This is an example of bias in this direction, relative to the null value.   

toward the null

Data is life!

100

This type of variable has categories in a hierarchy. 

Ordinal

200

When this type of variable is used as an outcome we use linear regression. 

continuous

300

This design phase control for confounding could also be considered inclusion/exclusion criteria. 

Restriction

400

If effect modification is present, this approach to analysis looks at specific subgroups. 

Stratification

500

This is a test of reliability that is used to make sure that the same results are elicited from participants at two different time points.

test re-test reliability

Special topics

100

There are this many of Hill's causal criteria.

Nine

200

Using this type of monitoring we are able to track the endemic rates of diseases like measles, HIV, and COVID-19. 

Surveillance

300

This is the process that manuscripts go through before publication.

Peer review

400

Using this type of sampling method researchers wanting to study cavities in childrens' teeth in New England used a random selection of kids, from a random selection of streets, from a random selection of towns.

Cluster sampling

500

This ultimate type of comparability between an exposed and unexposed group is impossible.

Counterfactual