RESUMO
This present paper is mainly methodological and has been written with the aim of helping researchers in psychiatry to produce results with higher quality and help readers to have adequate assessment values of others. Brief reflection is made on the most important conditions that must be fulfilled to prove a causality hypothesis, regardless of the investigation design used. However, the main purpose of the text is to examine and illustrate how these conditions work under a case-control study environment. Besides outlining the basic aspects concerning design and analysis, areas extremely illustrated with examples of case and controls in psychiatry found in the literature, a number of suggestions to avoid pitfalls that can invalidate research efforts developed using case-control methodology is offered.
Assuntos
Transtornos Mentais , Psiquiatria/métodos , Estudos de Casos e Controles , Humanos , Transtornos Mentais/diagnóstico , Transtornos Mentais/etiologia , Transtornos Mentais/terapiaRESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To determine the significance of the selected risk markers in the development of high blood pressure in a relatively short period of time. DESIGN: Longitudinal or cohort study of a sample of a population from the municipality of Cienfuegos, as a second measurement of the Cienfuegos Global Project. CONTEXT: Community. Municipality of Cienfuegos; geographic area of the subject-object intervention-investigation of the Cienfuegos Global Project. SUBJECT: 1,369 adults aged 15 years of more (619 men and 750 women; 1,294 alive and 75 dead) were followed from January 1992 to February 1994, which constitutes an alleatory, stratified, equiprobabilistic sample by age and sex. Persons diagnosed as hypertensive in the initial evaluation of Cienfuegos Global Project were excluded, so that the new series for hypertensive patients was constituted by 731 individuals with 125 new patients when the risk markers age, sex, color of skin, family history of high blood pressure, salt consumption, sedentarism, alcoholism and tobaccoism were studied. The association of the risk markers hypercholesterolemia or risky cholesterolemia and obesity was studied with another series formed by a second sample of 417 individuals, this sample introduced 74 new cases of high blood pressure. MAIN OUTCOME: It was intended to estimate the odds ratio for high blood pressure for the different risk markers studied, in those patients exposed or not to them. RESULTS: The odds ratio for each of the risk markers was determined. The odds related to age increased from 1.37, to 1.86 in males and decreased to 0.64 in white individuals. These 3 results were statistically significant as risk markers for high blood pressure. The odds ratio for the remaining risk markers had no statistical significance. CONCLUSION: The age, male sex, and black race, in the comparatively short term--slightly over two years--are the main risk markers that will markedly favor the appearance of high blood pressure.
Assuntos
Hipertensão/epidemiologia , Adolescente , Adulto , Biomarcadores , Estudos de Coortes , Cuba/epidemiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Estudos Longitudinais , Masculino , Fatores de RiscoAssuntos
Educação de Pós-Graduação , Saúde Pública/educação , Faculdades de Saúde Pública , Adulto , Cuba , Educação de Pós-Graduação/organização & administração , Educação de Pós-Graduação/estatística & dados numéricos , Humanos , Cooperação Internacional , América Latina , Faculdades de Saúde Pública/organização & administração , Faculdades de Saúde Pública/estatística & dados numéricosRESUMO
This paper intends to contribute to the discussion about the use of statistical techniques within the current biomedical and health investigation. We hypothesized that statistical methods necessary to go ahead with most high level research were rather small. Two high impact factor journals about epidemiology and health sciences were selected: New England Journal of Medicine and American Journal of Epidemiology. Both represent what we have called "successful research". The 2386 original and special articles which were published along the 1986-1990 period were carefully examined. Each statistical technique was classified into one of four complexity levels. Each paper was eventually classified on the same grounds. The frequency of each method was used within each level was then accounted. Statistical cited literature was also registered for each article. Finally, a descriptive examination of this information was developed. The results show that techniques widely dominant are those classified as from lower levels. Only the 12% for New England Journal of Medicine, and 17% for American Journal of Epidemiology belong to the most complex type. It was shown that current biomedical research dismisses, to a large extent both, complex statistical techniques and specialized statistical literature. In general, it limits itself to resources no more ahead than elementary multivariate procedures. It was concluded that simpler statistical methods are useful enough not only to understand what is currently published in journals like the ones studied but to produce high level results as well.