Evolution of epidemiologic methods and concepts in selected textbooks of the 20 th century

Fang Zhang, Desireé Michaels, Barun Mathema, Shuaib Kauchali, Anjan Chatterjee, David Ferris, Tamarra James, Jennifer Knight, Matthew Dounel, Hebatullah Tawfik, Janet Frohlich, Li Kuang, Elena Hoskin, Frederick Veldman, Giulia Baldi, Koleka Mlisana, Lerole Mametja, Angela Diaz, Nealia Khan, Pamela Sternfels, Jeffery Sevigny, Asher Shamam and Alfredo Morabia ()

International Journal of Public Health, 2004, vol. 49, issue 2, 97-104

Abstract: Textbooks are an expression of the state of development of a discipline at a given moment in time. By reviewing eight epidemiology textbooks published over the course of a century, we have attempted to trace the evolution of five epidemiologic concepts and methods: study design (cohort studies and case-control studies), confounding, bias, interaction and causal inference. Overall, these eight textbooks can be grouped into three generations. Greenwood (1935) and Hill (first edition 1937; version reviewed 1961)’s textbooks belong to the first generation, “early epidemiology”, which comprise early definitions of bias and confounding. The second generation, “classic epidemiology”, represented by the textbooks of Morris (first edition 1957; version reviewed 1964), MacMahon & Pugh (first edition 1960; version reviewed 1970), Susser (1973), and Lilienfeld & Lilienfeld (first edition 1976; version reviewed 1980), clarifies the properties of cohort and case-control study designs and the theory of disease causation. Miettinen (1985) and Rothman (1986)’s textbooks belong to a third generation, “modern epidemiology”, presenting an integrated perspective on study designs and their measures of outcome, as well as distinguishing and formalizing the concepts of confounding and interaction. Our review demonstrates that epidemiology, as a scientific discipline, is in constant evolution and transformation. It is likely that new methodological tools, able to assess the complexity of the causes of human health, will be proposed in future generations of textbooks. Copyright Birkhäuser-Verlag Basel 2004

Keywords: Epidemiology; History; Method; Bias; Confounding; Interaction; Causal inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00038-004-3117-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:49:y:2004:i:2:p:97-104

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/00038

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-004-3117-8

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Thomas Kohlmann, Nino Künzli and Andrea Madarasova Geckova

More articles in International Journal of Public Health from Springer, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().