Teaching epidemiological study designs

4 and 5 August 2010 I have been teaching epidemiological study designs to MSc and MPH students at the School of Health Systems and Public Health at the University of Pretoria. I gave several lectures on the theory and on examples of studies, and we did two case studies using the Problem-Based Learning approach. Topics discussed were: the difference between experimental and observational studies; principles, advantages and disadvantages of cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, cohort studies (both prospective and retrospective), hybrid designs (nested case-control study, case-cohort study), and randomised controlled trials.