Tutorial 11 Handout: Review of Study Designs

You are not fond of tattoos but friends are putting pressure on you to get one (they all have at
least one!). You are in two minds; to ditch them for a new set of friends or convince them with
valid, reliable and credible published evidence on the link between tattoos & skin cancer. You
visit the anti-tattoo resources but all you find is the evidence based mainly on ecological studies
littered with r and p values. You decide to conduct your own study but you are unsure which
design to choose since there are so many good ones out there. You choose six study designs and
would like to write a short description capturing main points of each. To help you few points
are listed below to keep you on track.

a) Cross-sectional study
b) Prospective Cohort study
c) Retrospective Cohort study
d) Case Control study
e) Quasi-experimental study
f) Randomized controlled trial

You are not worried about the ethics for designs e and f at this stage. To
help you clarify things you need to think about the following for description
of each design:

NOTE: Please use the points below as guide only, do not blindly follow &
write everything. Read the relevant assessment question carefully and
answer only what is asked.

 What are the main features & broadly how will you go about planning one?
 As per each design, who should be in and who shouldn’t be in the study sample?
(Inclusion & exclusion criteria)
 What data are essential and how these will be collected? For every variable specify units
of measurement (e.g. hours/week, Age in years, Yes/No, Present/Absent) and
measurement scale (e.g. nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio).
 What measure/s of association and effect can be obtained from each design, when:
o Both IV and DV are binary.
o When IV is binary but DV is interval/ratio.
 How will you exclude the role of chance factors for your findings?
 How will you know if your findings are even meaningful? (Or important enough to
convince your tattooed friends to leave you alone!)

Cross-sectional study:

Prospective Cohort study:

Retrospective Cohort study:

Case Control study:

[Type here] [Type here] [Type here]

 Quasi-experimental study:

Randomized controlled trial:

[Type here] [Type here] [Type here]