Introduction to Statistical Methods for Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of the presence of disease in populations. The goal of epidemiological studies is often to quantify the relationship between potential risk factors or exposures and disease. To accomplish this goal, there are several commonly used study designs including cross-sectional, cohort, and case-control. The study design dictates what can be estimated and how the data should be analyzed. In this workshop, we will detail each of the most common study designs used in epidemiology, how the data is collected, and what type of estimates can be obtained from it, such as odds ratios and risk ratios. We will demonstrate a few small hands-on examples of calculating these estimates in R and Stata.