Title: Descriptive Studies
Headings: Descriptive Studies
Descriptive Studies
What are descriptive studies?
Uses of Descriptive Studies
1. Health care planning
2. Hypothesis generation
3. Trend Analysis
Types of Descriptive Studies
Case reports
Case Series
Cross-sectional (Prevalence) Study
Ecological Study (or Ecological Correlational Study)
Advantages of an ecological study
Disadvantages of an ecological study
Further Reading

Content: Descriptive Studies
Descriptive Studies
What are descriptive studies? Descriptive studies are observational studies which describe the patterns of disease occurrence in relation to variables such as person, place and time. They are often the first step or initial enquiry into a new topic, event, disease or condition. Descriptive studies can be divided into two roles - those studies that emphasize features of a new condition and those which describe the health status of communities or populations. Case reports, case-series reports, before-and-after studies,cross-sectional studies and surveillance studies deal with invidiuals. Ecological Studies examine populations. Common misuses of descriptive studies involve a lack of a clear, specific and reproducible case definition and establishing a casual relationship which the data cannot support. Whilst descriptive studies can highlight associations between variables or between exposure and outcome variables, they cannot establish causality. Descriptive studies do not have a comparison (control) group which means that they do not allow for inferences to be drawn about associations, casual or otherwise. However, they can suggest hypotheses which can be tested in analytical observational studies.