Customer Reviews

Epidemiology: Study Design and Data Analysis

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
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This second edition is a massive text of over 800 pages that covers thoroughly the various study designs and statistical analysis methods used in Epidemiology. I have not seen the first edition so if you are interested in contrasting it with the first edition, the back cover gives a summary of the subjects that are added. This is a very practical book that avoids advanced mathematics and proofs and concentrates on basic math and practical results. Real data is used in the examples including the Scottish Heart Health Study data. The final chapter covers the important issues in meta-analyses.

This book can both be used as a first time introduction to epidemiology and the most popular statistical methods employed in health research, but also for looking up things when you need it, since it is actually quite thorough on a lot of subjects in the field. This is, however, not the best thing about the book.
The best thing about it is that it is very well-written - neither too complicated and unstructured, or too common-sense to the point where you get annoyed because the author never gets to the point. I'm sure that some readers will be find that Woodward has spend to many pages on the statistical part - at least if they expect to find a pure epidemiology-textbook - but the data analysis part is also very well-written and quite comprehensible. So even if you're not planning on spending the rest of your life with data analysis, this book can provide you wih an understanding of this part of epidemiological research as well, which will make the understanding of the field as a whole much better.

This is realy a good book and quite complete. Some issues are out, but probably could come in an advanced release.

Text are easy and smooth.

So classic a book with many nice concise examples to make you easy to get covering all the field of epidemiology! Get it and know it.

As an analyst regularly working on epidemiological studies of prescription drug safety, I find this an excellent reference book. It's clearly written with plentiful examples to help the reader understand study design and applying methods in data analysis. I reach for this book much more regularly than the classic Modern Epidemiology by Rothman et al.