Question

1. What questions are asked by descriptive epidemiology? What questions are asked by analytical epidemiology?

Answer 1

Questions asked by descriptive epidemiology are who, what, where, and when. These questions are used to study the pattern of disease occurrence, which focuses on person, place, and time. Hypotheses are formulated after organizing and analyzing these data. It studies the people/person affected, what a disease is, where it occurred or distribution of the disease, and when it occurred. Thus it describes a disease based on these parameters.

Questions asked by analytical epidemiology are how and why. These questions are used to study the causes and effects of diseases. This helps in the quantification of exposure and outcome association and is used to test the hypotheses. The association between any exposure and disease is studied using these questions. Here the 'how' and 'why' information is collected from individuals and hypotheses are tested using selection and comparison method.