Representativeness issues in epidemiological studies / 中华疾病控制杂志

ABSTRACT

@# Representativeness has long been a contentious topic in epidemiology. The review starts with defining representativeness in epidemiology and describing fundamental epidemiological concepts including study population, source population, target population, internal validity, and external validity. In addition, it elaborates the role and practicality of representativeness in four major epidemiological study designs including cross-sectional, cohort, case-control, and intervention studies. In summary, representativeness is an important consideration in cross-sectional studies of investigating disease or health status in the target population, but cannot be overstated in epidemiological studies for causal inferences regarding exposure-outcome relationships or intervention effects.