Time Schedule:
Thomas D Koepsell
EPI 512
Seattle Campus
Principles and methods of epidemiology. Covers measures of disease frequency, measures of effect, causal inferences, descriptive epidemiology, study types, misclassification, and effect modification. Designed for students who plan to take EPI 513. Prerequisite: prior or concurrent enrollment in BIOST 511 or equivalent. Offered: A.
Class description
The primary objective of EPI 512-513 is to teach students how to do good epidemiologic research. Secondary objectives are to help students understand and evaluate research reported by others and to enable them to apply epidemiologic principles in other health-related areas, including clinical medicine, public health practice, and health policy.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Sessions generally alternate between lectures and class discussion of a problem set that was distributed previously.
Recommended preparation
EPI 512 is the first course in a two-course sequence on epidemiologic methods. The EPI 512-513 sequence is intended mainly for graduate students majoring in Epidemiology or for others who will actually be conducting research using epidemiologic study designs in the future. These courses are also open to graduate students from other departments who need an in-depth introduction to epidemiologic methods in order to apply them as research tools in related fields.
Students should either have taken a first course in biostatistics or be enrolled in such a course while taking EPI 512.
Class assignments and grading
Problem sets concern real or hypothetical situations in which topics covered earlier in the course must be applied to solve a study design or data interpretation problem. Other problem sets involve working with data. Still others focus on a published paper and raise questions about how the study was designed and conducted. Students are expected to work on the problem sets in advance and to be prepared to discuss them in class.
Homework - 40%; mid-term exam - 20%; Final exam - 40%.
