Czeresnia D, de Fátima M, de Albuquerque M
Departamento de Epidemiologia da Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) - Rio de Janeiro, RJ-Brasil.
Rev Saude Publica. 1995 Oct;29(5):415-23. doi: 10.1590/s0034-89101995000500012.
The foundations on which the concept of risk has been constructed are discussed. A description of Rubin's model of causal inference, which was first developed in the domain of applied statistics, and later incorporated into a branch of epidemiology, is taken as the starting point. Analysis of the premisses of causal inference brings to light the logical stages in the construction of the concept of risk, allowing it to be understood "from the inside". The abovementioned branch of statistics and epidemiology seeks to demonstrate that statistics can infer causality instead of simply revealing statistical associations; the model gives the basis for estimating that which way be defined as the effect of a cause. Using this procedural distinction between causal inference and association, the model also seeks to differentiate between the epidemiologial dimension of concepts and the merely statistical dimension. This leads to greater complexity when handing the concepts of interation and coofounding. The redective aspects inherent in this methodological construction of risk are here high lighted. Thus, whether applied to individual or populational inferences, this methodological construction imposes limits that need to be taken into account in its theoretical and practical application to epidemiology.
本文讨论了风险概念构建的基础。文章以鲁宾因果推断模型的描述为出发点，该模型最初在应用统计学领域发展起来，后来被纳入流行病学的一个分支。对因果推断前提的分析揭示了风险概念构建的逻辑阶段，从而能够“从内部”理解它。上述统计学和流行病学分支试图证明，统计学可以推断因果关系，而不仅仅是揭示统计关联；该模型为估计可被定义为原因之效果的事物提供了基础。利用因果推断与关联之间的这种程序区分，该模型还试图区分概念的流行病学维度和仅仅是统计维度。这在处理交互作用和混杂概念时会导致更大的复杂性。这里强调了这种风险方法论构建中固有的还原论方面。因此，无论应用于个体推断还是总体推断，这种方法论构建都施加了一些限制，在其对流行病学的理论和实际应用中需要加以考虑。
