Analysis Of Epidemiologic Data Using R

This book addresses the description and analysis of occurrence data frequently encountered in epidemiological studies. With the occurrence of Covid-19, people have been exposed to the analysis and interpretation of epidemiological data. To be informed consumers of this information, people need to understand the nature and analysis of these data. Effort is made to emphasize concepts rather than mathematics. Subjects range from description of the frequencies of disease to the analysis of associations between the occurrence of disease and exposure. Those analyses begin with simple associations and work up to complex relationships that involve the control of extraneous characteristics. Analyses rely on the statistical software R, which is freeware in wide use by professional epidemiologists and other scientists.

Analytic procedures suitable for the study of human disease are scattered throughout the statistical and epidemiologic literature. Explanations of their properties are frequently presented in mathematical and theoretical language. This well-established text gives readers a clear understanding of the statistical methods that are widely used in epidemiologic research without depending on advanced mathematical or statistical theory. By applying these methods to actual data, Selvin reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each analytic approach. He combines techniques from the fields of statistics, biostatistics, demography and epidemiology to present a comprehensive overview that does not require computational details of the statistical techniques described. For the Third Edition, Selvin took out some old material (e.g. the section on rarely used cross-over designs) and added new material (e.g. sections on frequently used contingency table analysis). Throughout the text he enriched existing discussions with new elements, including the analysis of multi-level categorical data and simple, intuitive arguments that exponential survival times cause the hazard function to be constant. He added a dozen new applied examples to illustrate such topics as the pitfalls of proportional mortality data, the analysis of matched pair categorical data, and the age-adjustment of mortality rates based on statistical models. The most important new feature is a chapter on Poisson regression analysis. This essential statistical tool permits the multivariable analysis of rates, probabilities and counts.

Since it first appeared in 1996, the open-source programming language R has become increasingly popular as an environment for statistical analysis and graphical output. This is the first textbook to present classical biostatistical analysis for epidemiology and related public health sciences to students using the R language. Based on the assumption that readers have minimal familiarity with statistical concepts, the author uses a step-by-step approach to building skills. The text encompasses biostatistics from basic descriptive and quantitative statistics to survival analysis and missing data analysis in epidemiology. Illustrative examples, including real-life research problems drawn from such areas as nutrition, environmental health, and behavioral health, engage students and reinforce the understanding of R. These examples illustrate the replication of R for biostatistical calculations and graphical display of results. The text covers both essential and advanced techniques and applications in biostatistics that are relevant to epidemiology. Also included are an instructor's guide, student solutions manual, and downloadable data sets. Key Features: First overview biostatistics textbook for epidemiology and public health that uses the open-source R program Covers essential and advanced techniques and applications in biostatistics as relevant to epidemiology Features abundant examples to illustrate the application of R language for biostatistical calculations and graphical displays of results Includes instructor's guide, student solutions manual, and downloadable data sets.

Bias analysis quantifies the influence of systematic error on an epidemiology study’s estimate of association. The fundamental methods of bias analysis in epi- miology have been well described for decades, yet are seldom applied in published presentations of epidemiologic research. More recent advances in bias analysis, such as probabilistic bias analysis, appear even more rarely. We suspect that there are both supply-side and demand-side explanations for the scarcity of bias analysis. On the demand side, journal reviewers and editors seldom request that authors address systematic error aside from listing them as limitations of their particular study. This listing is often accompanied by explanations for why the limitations should not pose much concern. On the supply side, methods for bias analysis receive little attention in most epidemiology curriculums, are often scattered throughout textbooks or absent from them altogether, and cannot be implemented easily using standard statistical computing software. Our objective in this text is to reduce these supply-side barriers, with the hope that demand for quantitative bias analysis will follow.

This book is designed to be a practical study in infectious disease dynamics. The book offers an easy to follow implementation and analysis of mathematical epidemiology. The book focuses on recent case studies in order to explore various conceptual, mathematical, and statistical issues. The dynamics of infectious diseases shows a wide diversity of pattern. Some have locally persistent chains-of-transmission, others persist spatially in ‘consumer-resource metapopulations’. Some infections are prevalent among the young, some among the old and some are age-invariant. Temporally, some diseases have little variation in prevalence, some have predictable seasonal shifts and others exhibit violent epidemics that may be regular or irregular in their timing. Models and ‘models-with-data’ have proved invaluable for understanding and predicting this diversity, and thence help improve intervention and control. Using mathematical models to understand infectious disease dynamics has a very rich history in epidemiology. The field has seen broad expansions of theories as well as a surge in real-life application of mathematics to dynamics and control of infectious disease. The chapters of Epidemics: Models and Data using R have been organized in a reasonably logical way: Chapters 1-10 is a mix and match of models, data and statistics pertaining to local disease dynamics; Chapters 11-13 pertains to spatial and spatiotemporal dynamics; Chapter 14 highlights similarities between the dynamics of infectious disease and parasitoid-host dynamics; Finally, Chapters 15 and 16 overview additional statistical methodology useful in studies of infectious disease dynamics. This book can be used as a guide for working with data, models and ‘models-and-data’ to understand epidemics and infectious disease dynamics in space and time.

This text combines applied and theoretical approaches to the analysis of epidemiologic issues. It goes beyond elementary material to deal with real problems generated by disease data, and delves into less usual areas such as the analysis of spatial distributions, survival data, proportional hazards regression, and "computer intensive" approaches to statistical estimation. Each method discussed in the text is illustrated with examples which include complete sets of data. Using actual data demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of different analytic approaches in describing a disease process. The book's goal is to develop a clear understanding of analytic approaches to problems in epidemiological data analysis without relying on sophisticated mathematics and advanced statistical theory. Individuals with some background in epidemiology and statistics will find this a useful volume in the study of epidemiological analysis.

This textbook provides the basic concepts of epidemiology while preparing readers with the skills of applying statistical tools in real-life situations. Students, in general, struggle with statistical theories and their practical applications. This book makes statistical concepts easy to understand by focusing on real-life examples, case studies, and exercises. It also provides step-by-step guides for data analysis and interpretation using standard statistical software such as SPSS, SAS, R, Python, and GIS as appropriate, illustrating the concepts. Through the book's 23 chapters, readers primarily learn how to apply statistical methods in epidemiological studies and problem-solving. Among the topics covered: Clinical Trials Epidemic Investigation and Control Geospatial Applications in Epidemiology Survival Analysis and Applications Using SAS and SPSS Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Evidence-based Decision-Making in Public Health Missing Data Imputation: A Practical Guide Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Multivariate Linear Regression and Logistics Regression Analysis Using SAS Each chapter is written by eminent scientists and experts worldwide, including contributors from institutions in the United States, Canada, Bangladesh, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Middle East. Statistical Approaches for Epidemiology: From Concept to Application is an all-in-one book that serves as an essential text for graduate students, faculty, instructors, and researchers in public health and other branches of health sciences, as well as a useful resource for health researchers in industry, public health and health department professionals, health practitioners, and health research organizations and non-governmental organizations. The book also will be helpful for graduate students and faculty in related disciplines such as data science, nursing, social work, environmental health, occupational health, computer science, statistics, and biology.

Biostatistics and Computer-Based Analysis of Health Data Using the R Software addresses the concept that many of the actions performed by statistical software comes back to the handling, manipulation, or even transformation of digital data. It is therefore of primary importance to understand how statistical data is displayed and how it can be exploited by software such as R. In this book, the authors explore basic and variable commands, sample comparisons, analysis of variance, epidemiological studies, and censored data. With proposed applications and examples of commands following each chapter, this book allows readers to apply advanced statistical concepts to their own data and software. Features useful commands for describing a data table composed made up of quantitative and qualitative variables Includes measures of association encountered in epidemiological studies, odds ratio, relative risk, and prevalence Presents an analysis of censored data, the key main tests associated with the construction of a survival curve (log-rank test or Wilcoxon), and the Cox regression model