Appropriate epidemiologic methods as a prerequisite for valid study results

Excerpt

As in every research field, valid scientific results are a product of clear thinking and excellent methodology. The domain of observational studies in contrast to experimental studies is especially prone to systematic errors because many factors cannot be controlled by the investigator. Therefore, observational studies frequently suffer from confounding, nonresponse bias, misclassification, and mismeasurement bias that threaten the validity of study results. In contrast to other biomedical research fields, epidemiology is a quite young discipline [1] and the methodology of epidemiology to address these potential errors by either preventing them by design or controlling them by analysis is still evolving nowadays [2]. It is therefore good news to observe that the European Journal of Epidemiology published several articles that were explicitly dedicated to epidemiologic methods in recent years. The aim of this commentary is to highlight some of the methodological articles published in this journal. For this purpose, I give for each highlighted article a little introduction, thereafter summarize the authors’ study (indented text), and finally comment on the implications of the authors’ findings. …