Question

In 200 words or more, address the following question.

During the 2nd world war, your grandfather worked in factories to make ammunition. You noticed that many of his friends, who were co-workers, have died a form of lung cancer. You think there is some link between their exposure to beryllium, an alloying agent to make beryllium-copper, used in missiles. You are an epidemiologist and want to study this phenomenon. Develop a study design that would be best for studying this association. Address the following questions specifically: 1) What study design will you use? 2) Why did you choose this study design? 3) What are some of the strengths of using this design that are specific to your study? 4) What are some of the weaknesses of this study design that are specific to your study?

Answer 1

I would be using the  Case Control study because it will be the appropriate type of study for this investigation and analysis of lung cancer due to their exposure to the beryllium, which is an alloying agent, used in making beryllium copper . They are efficient for rare diseases or diseases with a long latency period between exposure and disease manifestation. They are less costly and less time-consuming; they are advantageous when exposure data is expensive or hard to obtain. But their disadvantage is that they are  unable to detect very small relative risks (less than 1.5) even where exposure is widespread and large numbers of cases of cancer are occurring in the population. The principal limitation of the method is the maximum number of cases which can be recruited and analysed.