Epidemiological Research: Terms and Concepts 2011th Edition

From the reviews:

“Miettinen’s readers know that he cares deeply about words and their usage. … This new volume, too, is a type of dictionary--one divided into three broad categories: ‘Medicine, Science, and Statistics’; ‘Epidemiological Research Proper’; and ‘Meta-Epidemiological Clinical Research.’ … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through professionals/practitioners.” (T. P. Gariepy, Choice, Vol. 49 (4), December, 2011)

“An important book for studying and gaining deeper insight into the theory of epidemiology. … This book will be particularly helpful for those interested in theoretical epidemiology and concerned with proper usage of concepts and terms. We therefore warmly recommend it to all students of epidemiology and all practitioners of epidemiological research.” (Jan van den Broeck and Jonathan R. Brestoff, International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 41 (3), 2012)

This book is by a single author – someone who, after medical school, has devoted half-a-century of full-time effort to ever better understand both clinical and community medicine and the research that is needed to produce the scientific knowledge-base of these.

The book is organized so as to address in separate sections first the preparatory topics of medicine (clinical and epidemiological), science in general, and statistics (mathematical); then topics of epidemiological research proper; and, finally, topics of ‘meta-epidemiological’ clinical research. In those two main sections, a further grouping is based on the distraction between objects and methods of study. In this framework, the particular topics are addressed both descriptively and quasi-prescriptively, commonly with a number of explicatory annotations.

This book is intended to serve and a handbook for whomever is, in whatever way, concerned with epidemiological or ‘meta-epidemiological’ clinical research. But besides, it is intended to serve as a textbook for the students in introductory courses on ‘epidemiological’ research – to which end there is a suggested hierarchy of the concepts that might reasonably be covered.