Ecological Study | Correlational Study | Study Designs | Epidemiology in Minutes | EpiMinutes 4

Ecological studies can be very useful if we can interpret them with caution. It is a popular study design often used to make comparisons between groups of people on exposures and outcomes of interests. It helps us to find correlations between exposures and outcomes at the population level.

Thumbnail: Susmita Roy

Resources used:
Environmental factors and cancer incidence and mortality in different countries, with special reference to dietary practices. Int. J. Cancer: 15, 617-631 (1975).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1140864/

Correlations between COVID-19 and burden of dementia: An ecological study and review of literature. Journal of the Neurological Sciences 416 (2020) 117013.
https://www.jns-journal.com/article/S...

An Ecological Study of the Determinants of Differences in 2009 Pandemic Influenza Mortality Rates between Countries in Europe. PLOS ONE 6(5): e19432. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...

Study Design VI – Ecological Studies
https://www.nature.com/articles/64004...

#ecologicalstudy #EpiMinutes #studydesigns #descriptivestudy

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Dr Kazi Mizanur Rahman is a medical graduate (Dhaka Medical College, University of Dhaka), with post-graduate qualifications in epidemiology (MS Epidemiology, Harvard University) and population health (PhD, Australian National University). Dr Rahman worked for more than a decade at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh as a public health researcher. He also taught at James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University for five years. In Australia, since finishing his PhD in 2015, Kazi has been working as an epidemiologist both in academia and program with a focus on protection and promotion of health at the population level.