{"id":176,"date":"2011-03-31T11:28:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T11:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/?p=176"},"modified":"2011-03-31T11:28:58","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T11:28:58","slug":"public-health-methodology-we-take-it-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/general-public-health\/public-health-methodology-we-take-it-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Health Methodology. We take it seriously!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800080\">&#8211; How many epidemiologists does it take to change a light bulb?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800080\">&#8211; Six. One to change it and five to critique the methods.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This made me laugh out loud. Methodology in Public Health is not a straightforward matter. It requires creativity, critical thinking, flexibility; but each method is bound to have limitations as well as advantages, which makes criticism almost inevitable, however well-applied the method might be.<\/p>\n<p>Here at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.springer.com\/public+health\/journal\/38\">International Journal of Public Health<\/a>, we are very keen on methodology issues and we can prove it! We have a whole separate section called &#8220;Hints and Kinks&#8221; :<\/p>\n<p><em>Hints and Kinks are short methodological reports (1000 words max., no  abstract) presenting topics relevant in survey research and  surveillance. They report on experiences with techniques in a variety of  areas and topics, such as writing questions, questionnaire design,  survey implementation, or new and original ways to show results.<\/em><br \/>\nSome recently published articles in this section include:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.springerlink.com\/content\/d56kh728633m4u70\/\">Marginal Structural Models: unbiased estimation for longitudinal studies<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.springerlink.com\/content\/gj333nr3u775wptt\/\">Using Directed Acyclic Graphs to detect limitations of traditional regression in longitudinal studies<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.springerlink.com\/content\/nn865108406w865r\/\">Analysis of socioeconomic health inequalities using the concentration index<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.springerlink.com\/content\/d004274088264374\/\">From measures of effects to measures of potential impact<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What other methodology issues would you like to see addressed? What have been your personal experiences in dealing with difficult or novel methodology questions! Please share!<\/p>\n<p><em>* I borrowed the light bulb joke from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/info\/3342661\">this <\/a>article by Richard M. Grimes.\u00a0 A list of 759 (!) light bulb jokes can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/bulbs.justpickone.org\/cgi-bin\/lbsearch.pl?keywords=all\">here <\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">&#8211; How many epidemiologists does it take to change a light bulb? &#8211; Six. One to change it and five to critique the methods. This made me laugh out loud. Methodology in Public Health is not a straightforward matter. It requires creativity, critical thinking, flexibility; but each method is bound to have limitations as well&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/general-public-health\/public-health-methodology-we-take-it-seriously\/\" title=\"Read Public Health Methodology. We take it seriously!\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,12,15],"tags":[270,395,419,483,567],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-public-health","category-international-journal-of-public-health","category-jokes","category-methodology","tag-epidemiologist","tag-hints-and-kinks","tag-ijph-article","tag-joke","tag-methodology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/301"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.springer.com\/ijph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}