NUTR 331 UNIT 1-15 (Learning Objectives) Final Exam Study Guide Athabasca University

Disadvantage of anecdotal evidence
✔✔inherent unreliability, all types of errors can occur. First, there is
chance. Second, there is bias in the observation. As a result of the power
of suggestion, people are often unreliable in describing their symptoms
Epidemiology
✔✔the study of the incidence and distribution of diseases, and of their
control and prevention. Researchers simply observe what people do and
whether they develop diseases. The four types are population, historical,
case-control, and cohort studies.
population studies and limitations
✔✔Population studies compare disease patterns with various factors,
including food consumption, on a country-wide basis. First, there could
be errors in the data. The second is the presence of confounding variables
that occur with the factor under study and may mask the real cause of the
disease. Because many factors tend to appear together in a diet or a
lifestyle, it is quite easy for some confounding variable to be the culprit
instead of the identified factor.
Historical studies
✔✔useful when there are accurate records available of the number of
people who have died from or have a specific health problem. Historical
studies are best compared with population studies. Historical studies
have the advantage of being based on large populations, and they often
involve large or even massive changes in disease incidence. However,
disease statistics collected 60 or more years ago can often be unreliable. A
more important disadvantage is that confounding variables often give rise
to spurious relationships.