Ecological study

In epidemiology, ecological studies are used to understand the relationship between outcome and exposure at a population level, where 'population' represents a group of individuals with a shared characteristic such as geography, ethnicity, socio-economic status of employment.[1] What differentiates ecological studies from other studies is that the unit analysis being studied is the group, therefore inferences cannot be made about individual study participants.[2] On the other hand, details of outcome and exposure can be generalized to the population being studied. Examples of such studies include investigating associations between units of grouped data, such as electoral wards, regions, or even whole countries.[3]

  1. ^ Carneiro, Ilona. (2011). Introduction to epidemiology. Howard, Natasha. (2nd ed.). Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-335-24462-1. OCLC 773348873.
  2. ^ Motulsky, Harvey (2018). Intuitive biostatistics : a nonmathematical guide to statistical thinking (Fourth ed.). New York. p. 477. ISBN 978-0-19-064356-0. OCLC 1006531983.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ Bruce, Nigel, 1955- (29 November 2017). Quantitative methods for health research : a practical interactive guide to epidemiology and statistics. Pope, Daniel, 1969-, Stanistreet, Debbi, 1963- (Second ed.). Hoboken, NJ. p. 82. ISBN 978-1-118-66526-8. OCLC 992438133.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)