What the video offers
This video, “Introduction to Observational Studies”, is from a Bristol Medical School course called “Research Methods and Statistics”. It is the first video in Section 10: “Observational Studies”. The site lists the learning outcomes: “On watching this video students should be able to:
- List different types of observational studies.
- Discuss the hierarchy of evidence tool.
- Explain why an observational study can generally only be used to describe associations rather than causation, and put it into the context of the hierarchy of evidence.
- Discuss why not all research questions can be investigated using an experiment and identify examples and describe why?”
The subsequent videos in Section 10 (also by Dr. Wills) go into more detail on cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, and case-control studies, and may also be of interest.
Who created it
This video was created by Dr. Andrew Wills, Senior Lecturer in Applied Statistics in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Bristol (UK) Medical School.
