Purpose

The purpose of this video lecture is to discuss advantages and disadvantages of observational studies. The video lectures specifically focuses on limitations of observational studies, such as bias and confounders.

Meet the Guest Speaker

Dr. Bertha Hidalgo an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Epidemiology. She holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Southern California and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research focuses health disparities related to cardiometabolic diseases, with a special focus on Latino populations and genomics. Dr. Hidalgo has a highly productive record of peer-reviewed research in relevant research areas with publications as lead or co-lead author in high-impact journals including Nature Scientific Reports, Diabetes, American Journal of Public Health, with 65 publications in total as lead, co-author or senior author. She is in her sixth year on the faculty at UAB and has attained research funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NIH, the American Heart Association, and internal funding from UAB.

Dr. Hidalgo is the past chair of the Minority Affairs committee and currently on the Board of Directors for the American College of Epidemiology, as well as a member on the NHLBI Board of External Experts. Dr. Hidalgo is also recipient of the 2019 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Early Career Achievement Award. Most recently, Dr. Hidalgo was awarded funding for the American Heart Association Institute for Cardiovascular Precision Medicine grant opportunity to increase prevention of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease in millennial women within underrepresented ethnic and racial groups.

Video Lecture

The video lecture is broken into three parts: Study design, bias, and confounding.

Please click each tab to watch each part of the video lecture.

Study Design
Bias
Confounding

Study Design

Bias

Confounding

Accessibility Note: To access auto closed captions (CC) services please click on the icon in the video's bottom right corner. Manual CC are available by submitting a request for services to ATAC: (812) 856-4112 or atac@iu.edu

NOTE: Please click on the link below to download the video lectures slides

Observational Studies: What Are They?

Readings

Below are papers you may be interested in reading regarding this topic:

Hernán, M. A., Hernández-Díaz, S., Werler, M. M., & Mitchell, A. A. (2002). Causal knowledge as a prerequisite for confounding evaluation: an application to birth defects epidemiology. American journal of epidemiology, 155(2), 176-184. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/155.2.176
Maclure, M., & Schneeweiss, S. (2001). Causation of bias: the episcope. Epidemiology, 114-122. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3703688
Austin, P. C. (2011). An introduction to propensity score methods for reducing the effects of confounding in observational studies. Multivariate behavioral research, 46(3), 399-424. 10.1080/00273171.2011.568786
Desai, R. J., & Franklin, J. M. (2019). Alternative approaches for confounding adjustment in observational studies using weighting based on the propensity score: a primer for practitioners. bmj, 367. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l5657