Gabriel Sánchez R, Gómez de la Cámara A
Unidad de Epidemiología Clínica, Hospital Universitario de la Princesa, Madrid.
Rev Esp Cardiol. 1996 Nov;49(11):837-51.
Clinical investigation studies can be classified according to their purpose (causality, diagnosis, therapy, etc), by its research strategy (observation or intervention), by the characteristics of its design (descriptive or analytic) or according to the basic axes of the investigation process (directionality and time orientation); and the personal attributes (exposure and disease) of the study population. Among observational designs, the cross-sectional and ecological studies are the main representatives of descriptive research. Their main objectives are the estimation of disease prevalence and risk factor distribution in the population, as well as the comparison of prevalence and risk factor distribution among several populations. On the other hand, the aim of analytical studies is the identification of individual risk factors associated with the disease. The key difference between descriptive and analytical studies is the existence of a comparison group in the latter, which allow hypotheses testing. Examples or analytical studies are the case-control and cohort studies. This paper deal with the principles of basic design and methods of descriptive (cross-sectional and ecological), and case-control studies. Finally we outline the basic concepts and principles of the screening, a frequent objective in many cardiovascular surveys, specifically in primary prevention.
临床调查研究可根据其目的（因果关系、诊断、治疗等）、研究策略（观察或干预）、设计特点（描述性或分析性）或调查过程的基本轴（方向性和时间取向）进行分类；以及研究人群的个人属性（暴露和疾病）。在观察性设计中，横断面研究和生态学研究是描述性研究的主要代表。它们的主要目标是估计人群中的疾病患病率和危险因素分布，以及比较几个人群中的患病率和危险因素分布。另一方面，分析性研究的目的是识别与疾病相关的个体危险因素。描述性研究和分析性研究的关键区别在于后者存在一个比较组，这使得可以进行假设检验。分析性研究的例子有病例对照研究和队列研究。本文讨论描述性研究（横断面研究和生态学研究）以及病例对照研究的基本设计原则和方法。最后，我们概述了筛查的基本概念和原则，筛查是许多心血管调查中常见的目标，特别是在一级预防中。
