Process / pipelineobservational design
Case-Control Study Design
A case-control study identifies individuals with a disease or outcome (cases) and a comparison group without the outcome (controls), then measures prior exposure retrospectively. Developed in the 1950s–1970s by epidemiologists like Schlesselman and MacMahon, case-control studies are especially efficient for rare diseases, as they sample cases enriched for the outcome, avoiding the need for enormous cohorts. They are a mainstay of clinical epidemiology, observational research, and outbreak investigations.
Open in MethodMindSoonVideoSoon
Read the full method
Members only
Sign inSign in with a free account to read this section.
Sources
- Schlesselman, J. J. (1982). Case-Control Studies: Design, Conduct, Analysis. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0195027815
- Rothman, K. J., Lash, T. L., & Greenland, S. (2008). Modern Epidemiology (3rd ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN: 978-0781755657
- Greenland, S., & Thomas, D. C. (1990). On the need for the rare disease assumption in case-control studies. American Journal of Epidemiology, 132(2), 374–375. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a115675 ↗