Graduate Prerequisites: Primarily for doctoral students. MPH students must have completed EP85 4 and have consent of the instructor. - This seminar-style course is intended to deepen students’ knowledge of study design features so that they can better recognize and hopefully either avoid or reduce the influence of common, but at times under-appreciated, sources of biases in measurement, effect estimation, and interpretation. Example topics include case-control studies, study efficiency, measures of effect, exposure misclassification, casual diagrams, and direct and indirect effects. At its essence, epidemiology comprises a set of tools for answering questions in public health. Accordingly, this course also attends to the theoretical frameworks we might use to inform our studies, e.g., what gets asked, what gets measured, what adjustments are made. Each topic entails reading and student-led discussions of methodological papers, historical and recent. Students also develop skills in writing and speaking through classroom discussion, writing assignments, and a written exam.

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