Time Schedule:
J Emily White
EPI 528
Seattle Campus
Principles and methods of measuring exposures (risk factors) in epidemiological studies. Questionnaire design; quality-control procedures for interviews, record abstraction, and lab methods;validity and reliability of measures,;effects of measurement error; maximizing response rates; measurement of specific exposures. Credit/no credit only. Prerequisite: EPI 513. Offered: Sp.
Class description
Student learning goals
Develop an operational definition of an exposure (disease risk factor), including development of an algorithm to compute the relevant dose of exposure over the etiologically important time period of life.
Design, analyze and interpret validity and reliability studies that evaluate the accuracy of a specific method to measure a specific exposure.
Design a questionnaire in terms of content, wording and format.
Implement study quality control procedures for a range of measurement methods including self-administered questionnaires, interviews, medical record abstraction, diaries, and laboratory measures on human specimens.
Implement strategies to increase response rates in epidemiologic studies.
Explain misclassification bias and selection bias and quantify their effects.
General method of instruction
Lectures, homework and class discussion of homework.
Recommended preparation
Epi 513.
Class assignments and grading
16 homework problem sets. Final assignment on the measurement and accuracy of one or a few related exposures (e.g. nutrient intake from a questionnaire, medical procedures abstracted from a medical record or lab measures of hormones), based on one journal article.
Homework assignments are graded/ class is CR/NC only.
