Briscoe J, Baltazar J, Young B
Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27514.
Int J Epidemiol. 1988 Jun;17(2):441-7. doi: 10.1093/ije/17.2.441.
The problems and prospects in the use of case-control studies to assess the effects of improvements in environmental sanitation on diarrhoea morbidity are discussed on the basis of two field studies. It is concluded that an adequate design is available for assessing the effects of a single improvement on diarrhoeal disease. The estimates of effect appear to be valid and sufficiently precise. For addressing more complex questions of interactions, sample sizes would have to be increased substantially. The experience with two field studies suggests that there is hope that a simpler protocol may be feasible, in which only limited information is collected, in which few home visits are made, and in which analytical techniques are simple. Until more field studies have been conducted definitive conclusions cannot be reached on the applicability of such a simple, rapid and inexpensive approach.
基于两项实地研究，讨论了使用病例对照研究来评估环境卫生改善对腹泻发病率影响方面的问题和前景。得出的结论是，有一个适当的设计可用于评估单一改善措施对腹泻疾病的影响。效果估计似乎是有效的且足够精确。为了解决更复杂的相互作用问题，样本量必须大幅增加。两项实地研究的经验表明，有可能采用一种更简单的方案，即只收集有限的信息，进行很少的家访，且分析技术简单。在进行更多实地研究之前，无法就这种简单、快速且廉价方法的适用性得出明确结论。
