The Case-Control Method: Design and Applications

by Haroutune Armenian (Editor)

Over the past fifty years, the case-control method, and to a lesser extent its case-based variants, have become the most important tools for the investigator of health problems. The case control method is the study of persons with the disease and a suitable control group of persons who do not have the disease. The book helps readers address a number of general and specific questions dealing with the case-control and other case-based methods, including questions of how to design and implement a case-control study that minimizes biases, how to analyze the data to appropriately deal with confounding variables and help identify reactions, and how to interpret data and present the results from a case-control study.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2006

Reviews

[Dunc Vernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can't help but feel a little spark of delight when you first read the conceptual steps from RCT to cohort study to case-control design. It's surely one of the most insightful research designs of the modern era and has contributed vastly towards public health and health care, however, the relative ease of running a case-control design has meant that poorly conducted examples have given it a bad reputation.

This book acts as a good reference guide to designing and carrying out a case control study and helps readers to avoid many of the biases and confounding factors that have contributed to this bad reputation. It is also a useful reference for people who make use of data from case control studies as it provides a more in depth guide than the usual chapter set aside for case-control studies in standard epidemiology texts.

It can be read from cover to cover or dipped in to when considering specific aspects of case-control designs. I read it from cover to cover and importantly, when I finished this book, that little spark of delight had not been extinguished.