Sabine Braat, The University of Melbourne e Karen Lamb, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
It’s hard to decide which treatment to choose when trying to quit smoking or lose weight. The term ‘number needed to treat’ could help you decide what is most likely to work.
Ear infections are no fun. The OSTRICH clinical trial looked at whether oral steroid medications might help.
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Clinical trials can assess impact of a medication on a disease. The ideal design is ‘blind’ – when the researchers and participants do not know who is assigned to the different treatments.
A study showed it’s social circumstance, and not biology, that explains most of the differences in the occurrence of diabetes among racial and ethnic groups.
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What contributes most to being at high risk of diabetes – diet, genes or something else? Big research questions need robust research approaches, so let’s break it down.
The flu virus changes over time – which is why you need a different flu shot each year.
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Important research questions can almost always be answered better with a combination of methods – where both quantitive and qualitative data play a role.
A group of people with something in common is called a ‘cohort’ in research.
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Cohorts, or groups of people, are followed over time in longitudinal studies – imagine the study subjects marching forward together through the years, like a group of soldiers.
Sometimes statistical analysis suggests a result is significant – but actually in real life it means very little.
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Peta King, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute
Once upon a time, a group of disheartened scientists found their tearoom bereft of teaspoons. They explored the problem with a longitudinal study design.