Confounding in Epidemiology
Subject areas: biology, mathematics
Grade level: 10th-12th
Level of difficulty: moderate
Prerequisite: Students should have prior knowledge of cohort studies. The following units will expose students to--or help fulfill--this prerequisite:
- Disease Outbreak Investigation
- Casualties of War: The Short- and Long-Term Effects of the 1945 Atomic Bomb Attacks on Japan
- Tuskegee
- Testing Ephedra: Using Epidemiological Studies to Teach the Scientific Method
- Measures in Epidemiology
- A Mock Trial of Yellow Dye #5 as a Cause of Male Infertility: Using an Urban Legend to Learn About Causation
Summary: This two- to three-day long unit will provide students an elementary understanding of confounding, one of the major problems of non-experimental research. It will provide them experience with the calculation of relative risk and the use of stratification as part of a procedure for identifying and correcting for confounding variables in a cohort study.
The unit will also lead students through the arguments and calculations for establishing whether a variable is a confounder.
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