Occupational Epidemiologists

There exists a variety of reasons why epidemiologists would prefer one type of study and consequently opt for another favorable choice, and this is basically based on the weaknesses of each approach to each study design. First of all, there has to be the decision on what to study, for instance studying prenatal exposure to electric fields and the general impacts they might have on the baby`s weight. It is good to look at the existing literature first about the baby weight so as to asses’ baby weight on current knowledge and data (Ingleby, 2012). Therefore, there are various types of study based on review of the existing literature. These epidemiological studies includes the cohort study. Also defined as ‘what will happen to me’ study follows a group of healthy people with different levels of exposure and thereby assesses what may happen to their health over time. It is among the most desirable design since the exposure precedes the health outcome, condition necessary for causation and is usually less bias because the exposure is evaluated before the health status is known. It is most suitable for the most common diseases (Ingleby, …show more content…
It typically involves selecting working people with particular jobs as your subjects. The advantage based on this is that, workers have often substantially higher exposures to specific risk factors than the typical population. The disadvantage is that workers with various jobs differ substantially in terms of risk, like the rich, elderly or disabled (Ingleby, 2012). This makes it very difficult to generalize to populations with some nonworking people. Risk factors in this would include workers being exposed to variety of chemicals, stress and poor ventilation or the air quality and finally many people exposed to the risk factors that may be of interest may be much smaller in the work place than they are in the