Comparer des méthodes

	Étude écologique	Étude écologique méta-analytique
Domaine	Épidémiologie	Épidémiologie
Famille	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Année d'origine	19th century (Snow 1854); formalised mid-20th century	1990s
Auteur d'origine	Various; foundational work by John Snow (1854) and systematised in modern form by Brian MacMahon and colleagues	Morgenstern, Blettner, and colleagues in epidemiology methodology
Type	Observational epidemiological study	Quantitative synthesis design
Source fondatrice	Morgenstern, H. (1995). Ecologic studies in epidemiology: concepts, principles, and methods. Annual Review of Public Health, 16(1), 61–81.	Blettner, M., Sauerbrei, W., Schlehofer, B., Scheuchenpflug, T., & Friedenreich, C. (1999). Traditional reviews, meta-analyses and pooled analyses in epidemiology. International Journal of Epidemiology, 28(1), 1–9.
Alias	aggregate study, correlational study, ecological correlation study, population-level study	ecological meta-analysis, aggregate-level meta-analysis, meta-analytic ecologic design, population-level meta-analysis
Apparentées	5	2
Résumé	An ecological study is an observational epidemiological design in which the unit of analysis is a group or population — a country, region, city, or time period — rather than an individual. Exposures and outcomes are measured as aggregates (rates, proportions, or means) and then correlated across groups to generate or evaluate hypotheses about population-level associations between risk factors and disease.	A meta-analytic ecological study synthesises data from multiple populations or geographic units — rather than from individual patients — to estimate associations between exposures and health outcomes. By pooling aggregate-level statistics across studies or regions, it extends the reach of ecological reasoning to a wider evidence base, enabling detection of exposure-outcome relationships that single-population ecological analyses may miss due to limited variability or sample size.