A cohort study is a research study carried out by healthcare specialists. Its main aim is to uncover the cause of disease and correlate health outcomes to risk factors. It is carried out by comparing the occurrence or incidence of disease in the affected group, with the prevalence in the group without the disease. Cohort studies can be carried out in two forms. Retrospective studies or prospective studies. These tests us useful for estimating the risk of developing a disease and the expected incidence rate (Hughes, 2017). Di (2017) outlines three general measures of interpretation of cohort studies. They entail incidence density or incidence rate, the incident density ratio, and the attributable risk. The incidence density is measured to establish the sum of new cases who are often at risk of acquiring the illness in a given population during a certain time. It can loosely be defined as a prevalence rate prediction. It is measured by the number of people under observation. The incidence density ratio on the other side is a measure used to compare and contrast the incidence rates of disease occurring at any given time. It explains the extent to which prevalence occurred in a particular area. It is a comparison of two incidence density values. For example, the incidence density ratio of HIV in rural Indonesia was 5. This means that the incidence rate occurs at five times greater in the exposed group than in the unexposed group. The incidence density ratio is also known as the risk ratio. Attributable risk is the difference observed in the rate of incidence in the group that has been exposed to the disease compared to the group that has not been exposed. It is calculated by subtracting the number of exposed incidence rates from the unexposed incidence rate (Garcia, 2017).
References
Di, T. J. (2017). Retrospective cohort examining the relationship between changes in nutritional status, as measured by the abridged Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment, and changes in quality of life in people with cancer. Montreal: McGill University Libraries Polishers.
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Garcia, E. (2017). Occupational Exposure to Metalworking Fluids and Incidence of Cancer in the United Autoworkers-General Motors Cohort: Assessing and Accounting for the Healthy Worker Survivor Effect, Berkeley, CA, University of California Publishers.
Hughes, G. (2017). Ipsative assessment and personal learning gain: Exploring international case studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers.
