Observational study
| Categories of patient-oriented studies |
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An observational study is usually a patient-related data collection in the health sector, e.g. B. on the regular use of drugs in therapies. In observational studies, no experiments or additional investigations are carried out. They are mostly designed as purely exploratory studies, to generate hypotheses , or - to a limited extent - to assess the validity of hypotheses.
As can be seen in the adjacent figure, observational studies can be divided into descriptive studies and analytical studies. The analytical studies in turn include the cohort studies, the case-control studies and the cross-sectional studies.
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A 2014 large-scale Cochrane survey compared the reliability of observational studies with that of randomized controlled trials. The differences were so insignificant that the authors recommended that when evaluating studies, the special circumstances of each individual study should be carefully considered, instead of being based on generalized judgments about study types.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ CM Seiler: Patient-Oriented Research in Surgery . In: Manfred Georg Krukemeyer, Hans-Ullrich Spiegel (Hrsg.): Surgical research . Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-13-133661-3 , p. 205–212 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ A. Anglemyer, HT Horvath, L. Bero: Healthcare outcomes assessed with observational study designs compared with those assessed in randomized trials. In: The Cochrane database of systematic reviews. Number 4, April 2014, p. MR000034, doi : 10.1002 / 14651858.MR000034.pub2 , PMID 24782322 (free full text) (review).