Methods in Epidemiology

This book describes the variety of direct and indirect population size estimation (PSE) methods available along with their strengths and weaknesses. Direct estimation methods, such as enumeration and mapping, involve contact with members of hard-to-reach groups. Indirect methods have practical appeal because they require no contact with members of hard-to-reach groups. One indirect method in particular, network scale-up (NSU), has several strengths over other PSE methods: It can be applied at a province/country level, it can estimate size of several hard-to-reach population in a single study, and it is implemented with members of the general population rather than members of hard-to-reach groups.
The book discusses methods to collect, analyze, and adjust results and presents methods to triangulate and finalize PSEs.

Presents an essential question that needs to be answered in order to estimate the burden of disease in any population: What is the size of a hard-to-reach / unobserved populations at risk for a disease? Provides an overview of the different methods to estimate the size of hard-to-reach populations, with an extensive focus on the network scale-up method Introduces a network scale-up method which is a promising method to estimate the size of hard-to-reach populations at both the local and national levels and does not require direct contact with members of hard-to-reach populations, and is much more feasible than many others Features details on how to design, implement, analyze, triangulate results, and extrapolate findings to subnational and national levels using real-world examples of network scale-up projects Is full of real-world examples with appendices that include analysis code in R, Stata, and Excel

Autorentext

George W. Rutherford is the Salvatore Pablo Lucia Professor of Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, Pediatrics and History at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Inhalt
Review of size estimation methods.- Methods to estimate the average social network size.- Estimating the size of hidden groups.- Data smoothing, extrapolation, and triangulation.