Epidemiologic methods

Abstract

Epidemiologic methods consist of a wide array of tools readily applicable to injury research. This chapter discusses epidemiologic concepts, theoretical frameworks, and research designs in the context of etiologic studies of injury. The epidemiologic triad, agent-host-environment, was first applied to injury research in the 1940s, but the common agent causing most injuries, acutely transferred energy, was not identified until the 1960s. While injury shares many similarities with diseases in causes and consequences, there are three distinctive features characterizing injury causation, namely the extremely short latency, intentionality, and lifetime susceptibility. Injury researchers have played a significant role in the evolution of modern epidemiology by expanding the epidemiologic theoretical framework and by contributing to the development of influential observational study designs, such as the case-control and case-crossover methods.