
However, case–control designs can also provide strong evidence regarding environmental factors ( Robertson, 1992).ĭominique Lord. It is important to highlight that the human host or vector (pedestrian and driver) in road traffic injuries has been the unit of analysis in most case–control studies, to the neglect of factors that may be more subject to change for injury control. The study included physiological, psychological, and behavioral risk factors and found that factors such as tiredness and waking up early were related to the occurrence of road traffic injuries.
#Case control study drivers
This study explored the risk factors influencing the occurrence of road traffic injuries on drivers with a history of accidents and on controls. In addition, case–control studies are commonly used to study conditions that are relatively rare or that have a prolonged induction period ( dos Santos-Silva, 1999a).Ī study carried out in Shanghai, China, is an example of a case–control study measuring the effect of exposition to different risk factors ( Yu, Wang, & Chen, 2005). Case–control design is simply an efficient sampling technique for measuring exposure–disease associations in a cohort or study base ( Wacholder, et al., 1992). Therefore, case–control studies represent a cost-effective way of identifying risk and protective factors and generating hypotheses for subsequent, methodologically stronger studies ( Lazcano-Ponce et al., 2001). This is in part due to the possibility of incorporating in the analysis many exposition factors simultaneously and relatively quickly and inexpensively ( dos Santos-Silva, 1999a). Cristina Inclán-Valadez, in Handbook of Traffic Psychology, 2011 3.1.1 When Are Case–Control Studies Used?Ĭase–control studies are frequently one of the first approaches used in the etiological study of a disease or health condition. The cohort study design can meet these requirements. Instead, it is better to undertake a prospective longitudinal study with repeated measurements of diet and even better to employ several methods to measure diet. This is difficult to achieve in case-control studies that rely on historical data. This is largely because it is necessary in nutritional research to obtain estimates of measurement error while evaluating the diet–disease relationship. Concerns about measurement errors ensure that case-control studies are not the design of choice in nutritional gerontology. However, this sometimes can remove important differences between groups in particular where exposure and matching variables are linked (positively or negatively), as is the case within a wide range of socio-demographic variables. It will seem obvious that the best solution is to match cases and controls as closely as possible. There is wide discussion on the need to match cases and controls, and when this is done, how exactly matching should take place. The prior exposures of the cases and controls to a putative causal agent or process could then be compared. In nutritional gerontology, it would be usual first to specify criteria for the presence/absence of a condition and then to identify a group with a condition (cases) and a group without that condition (control subjects). Whalley, in Handbook of Models for Human Aging, 2006 CASE-CONTROL STUDIESĬase-control studies are an efficient way to examine possible causal mechanisms, and the background, conduct, and interpretation of these study designs is well summarized ( Schesselmann, 1982).
