case-control study

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an observational epidemiological study design in which people with a disease or outcome of interest — cases — are compared with people without it — controls — with respect to prior exposures, in order to identify factors associated with increased or decreased odds of the outcome; case-control studies are efficient for studying rare diseases or outcomes with long latency periods because they begin with the outcome and work backward to exposures, rather than following a large population forward in time; the primary measure of association in a case-control study is the odds ratio, which estimates the relative odds of exposure in cases compared with controls; potential biases including selection bias in control group identification and recall bias in self-reported exposure ascertainment must be carefully managed in the design and interpretation of case-control studies