User:Psarka/What a mess!

This is a page to store the notes on the effort to resolve the mess of epidemiology notation and terminology.

Main references
SMM: Statistical methods in medical research (4 ed.) 20K gs citations

DoE: A Dictionary of Epidemiology (6 ed.) 6K gs citations

EBtB: Epidemiology: Beyond the Basics (4 ed.) 2K gs citations

EAI: Epidemiology: An Introduction (2 ed.) 2K gs citations

Notation
Harmonize the notation, if possible staying close to dictionary of epidemiology (DoE):

Notation of the dictionary of the epidemiology:

$$I_e$$ - incidence rate among the exposed

$$I_u$$- incidence rate among the unexposed

$$I_p$$- incidence rate in the population

etc.

Terminology
Remove ambiguous terms and align with the dictionary of epidemiology:


 * Attributable risk percent -> Attributable fraction among the exposed


 * Deprecate Attributable risk. Quote:

 "attributable risk (Syn: causal risk difference) The risk of the outcome had everybody 

 in the population been exposed minus the risk of the outcome had everybody in the 

''population remained unexposed. [...] Unfortunately,''

 this term and attributable rate have been used to denote a number of different 

 concepts, including the attributable fraction for the population, the attributable 

fraction among the exposed, and the rate difference."

Template
Name of the category Epidemiology/methods of the Template:Medical research studies is not ideal, and further subdivisions to "occurrence", "association:absolute", "association:relative", "other" is not adding much clarity.

It needs to be sorted out.

The general terms found in pages are:


 * epidemiological measure
 * measure
 * statistical ratio
 * way to quantify

A good candidate from the dictionary of the Epidemiology is:

 "effect measure A quantity that measures the effect of a factor on the frequency or risk of 

'' a health outcome or effect. Such measures include the attributable fraction, which ''

 measure the fraction of cases due to a factor; risk differences and rate differences, 

 which measure the amount a factor adds to the risk or rate of a disease; and risk 

 ratios, odds ratios, and rate ratios, which measure the amount by which a factor 

'' multiplies the risk, odds, or rate of disease. The identification of these quantities with ''

 effect measures presumes that there is no bias in the quantity." 

Worked example
The "ARR RRR worksheet" focuses on control vs target group, while in epidemiology I find exposed vs unexposed more frequently.

Also, target vs control does not allow for discussion about the population.

Also, the positive effect - negative effect distinction is slightly too heavy on the understandability.

Also, some formulas do not match the literature

Random notes
What is this ?!


 * Population Impact Measures

Related pages


 * Incidence (epidemiology)
 * Infection rate (duplicate of the above???)
 * Prevalence