Survey Methods in Community Medicine [antikvár]

Preface The purpose of this book is to provide a simple and systematic guide to the planning and performance of investigations concerned with health and disease and with health care, whether they are studies designed to widen the horizons of scientific knowledge or whether they have more directly practical aims, such as the provision of information needed as a basis for inmiediate decisions and action. It is not a compendium of detailed techniques of investigation or of statistical methods, but an ABC to the design and conduct of studies. It is hoped that the book will be helpful to doctors and others planning investigations of groups and populations, such as medical surveys, comparisons of cases and controls, prophylactic and therapeutic trials, studies of the use of medical services, and other epidemiological and evaluative research. While the emphasis is on investigations in community medicine, the book may be found useful in the planning of other kinds of medical and public health research. Despite the title, consideration is given to experimental as well as to survey methods. The more correct title of Research Methods in Community Medicine was avoided in order not to repel readers who, while they are interested in conducting investigations aimed at pragmatic purposes, conceive of 'research' as an ivory-tower activity far removed from their own mundane activities. J. H. Abramson The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem 1974