What are the epidemiological methods and epidemiological approaches. The Epidemiological Method is a scientific approach to finding causal factors and causal relationships for the occurrence of certain events. In epidemiology there are 2 types of approaches or methods namely:
Epidemiological Method and the Approach
a. Descriptive epidemiology (descriptive epidemiology)
In it, it is studied how the frequency of disease changes according to changes in epidemiological variables consisting of person, place, and time.
Persons
Here will be discussed the role of age, gender, social class, occupation, social class, ethnic group, marital status, family size, family structure.
Place
Knowledge of the geographic distribution of a disease is useful for planning health services and can provide insight into the etiology of the disease.
Comparison of disease patterns is often done between:
- Government boundaries
- City and countryside
- Areas or places based on natural boundaries (mountains, rivers or seas)
- Countries
- “Regional”
Time
Studying the relationship between time and disease is a basic requirement in epidemiological analysis, because changes in disease over time indicate changes in etiological factors.
b. Analytical Epidemiology
This approach or study is used to examine data and information obtained from descriptive epidemiological studies.
There are 3 studies on this epidemiology, namely:
1. Case History Study
In this study, two groups of people will be compared, namely the group affected by the cause of the disease and the group of people not affected by the disease (the control group).
2. Cohort Study
In this study a group of people is exposed to a causative agent (agent). Then another group of people is taken who has the same characteristics as the first group. This second group is called the control group. After a predetermined time the two groups were compared, the difference between the two groups was looked for whether it was significant or not.
3. Experimental Epidemiology
This study was carried out by conducting experiments (trials) on the subject group, then compared with the control group (which was not subject to the experiment).
Thus an overview of the Epidemiological Method and the Approach. Hope it’s useful.
