Studying health and disease

Author(s)
Bibliographic Information

Studying health and disease

edited by Kevin McConway and Basiro Davey ; written and produced by the Open University

(Health and disease series, bk. 2)

Open University Press, 2001

Full-colour 2nd ed

  • : pbk

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Note

"This publication forms part of an Open University level 2 course, U205 Health and Disease"--P.[3]

Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-200) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Why are some individuals and groups within a society more prone to illness than others? How do we know what makes us ill? What can be done to alleviate illness or disability, and how can we be sure that an intervention will work? Biomedical scientists, doctors, statisticians, epidemiologists, sociologists, anthropologists and historians all study health and disease, but when faced with similar problems they tend to produce radically different explanations and solutions. This book describes the basic methods of investigation used by these disciplines, and shows how they are related and how they differ. The multidisciplinary team of authors brings together a wide range of expertise to provide an introduction to: social surveys, qualitative interviewing, ethnography and participant observation, historical research methods, the strategies used by demographers and epidemiologists to measure and compare disease distributions in very different populations, the concepts underlying statistical testing, experimental procedures such as randomised drug trials, the use of placebos and controls, and the key features of the scientific method in laboratory research. The book refers to examples including diabetes, hysteria, neural-tube defects and cardiovascular disease to demonstrate how the multiple interacting causes of ill health can be studied at many different levels - from microscopic processes within body cells to large-scale interactions between different groups in society. It aims to develop a critical understanding of how current knowledge has been assembled from the observations, measurements and experiments of many disciplines to provide a fuller picture of health and disease in the modern world.

Table of Contents

Introduction The nature of scientific research Qualitative methods in sociology and anthropology Historical research methods Quantitative methods in social science Analysing numerical data Some basic ideas of demography and epidemiology Investigating causes and evaluating treatments Biomedical research methods The web of explanations Abbreviations list References and further sources, including internet sites Index.

by "Nielsen BookData"

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Details
  • NCID
    BA56936958
  • ISBN
    • 0335208355
  • Country Code
    uk
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Buckingham
  • Pages/Volumes
    215 p.
  • Size
    27 cm
  • Parent Bibliography ID
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