Choi Bernard C K, Pak Anita W P
Public Health Agency of Canada, Government of Canada, Ottawa, ON.
Can J Public Health. 2005 Jul-Aug;96(4):284-6. doi: 10.1007/BF03405165.
Awareness of potential biases is important for both researchers and policy-makers in public health: for researchers when designing and conducting studies, and for policy-makers when reading study reports and making decisions. This paper explains the meaning and importance of epidemiologic bias in public health and discusses how it arises and what can be done to minimize it. Examples of counting participants in a meeting, to which many policy-makers can relate, are used throughout the paper to illustrate bias in general, random error and systematic error, the effect of sample size, the three main categories of bias (selection, information and confounding), stratification and mathematical modeling.
对于研究人员而言，在设计和开展研究时需要注意；对于政策制定者而言，在阅读研究报告和做出决策时需要注意。本文解释了公共卫生领域中流行病学偏差的含义和重要性，并讨论了偏差是如何产生的以及如何将其降至最低。本文通篇使用了许多政策制定者都能联想到的会议参会人数统计示例，来说明一般偏差、随机误差和系统误差、样本量的影响、偏差的三大主要类别（选择、信息和混杂）、分层以及数学建模。
