Studies and research design in medicine

Abstract

Adequate design is an essential condition for conducting a successful study. This review describes the most common types of research design in medicine. We discuss the differences between different types of observational and interventional studies, their advantages and limitations providing examples for each study design. The concept of bias and its potential sources in different studies are covered. We suggest the most suitable approaches to study design for different research objectives and outline approaches to data presentation. During the last decades, several guidelines for conducting and reporting different types of research were proposed and they are also covered in this manuscript.

Keywords

• statistics
• case report
• cross-sectional studies
• case-control studies
• cohort studies
• randomised controlled trials as topic
• meta-analysis as topic
• bias