Basic concepts - Definitions, tools and scope; descriptive methods (logarithmic scales, age, sex, ethnic groups, social class, marital status, family variables), mapping environmental factors, cohort analysis; causal relations (observational and experimental studies), natural experiments, causality, associations and applications; rates and other measures (incidence, prevalence, crude and specific rates, indices of community health); screening (validity, reliability, yield, predictive value); infectious disease (agents, carriers, transmission, common source, propagated epidemics, secondary attack rates); chronic disease (retrospective, prospective and historical prospective studies), choice of study method; introduction to meta-analysis; practical student investigation.

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