Editing Cohort study (section)

== Types ==
Cohort studies can be [[Retrospective cohort study|retrospective]] (looking back in time, thus using existing data such as medical records or claims database) or [[Prospective cohort study|prospective]] (requiring the collection of new data).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ehib.org/faq.jsp?faq_key=37|title=FAQ: What is a cohort study?|date=2 June 2001|publisher=California Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Investigations Branch|access-date=10 September 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726020518/http://www.ehib.org/faq.jsp?faq_key=37|archive-date=26 July 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref> Retrospective cohort studies restrict the investigators' ability to reduce confounding and bias because collected information is restricted to data that already exists. There are advantages to this design, however, as retrospective studies are much cheaper and faster because the data has already been collected and stored.

A [[cohort (statistics)|cohort]] is a group of people who share a common characteristic or experience within a defined period (e.g., are currently living, are exposed to a drug or vaccine or pollutant, or undergo a certain medical procedure). Thus a group of people who were born on a day or in a particular period, say 1948, form a birth cohort. The comparison group may be the general population from which the cohort is drawn, or it may be another cohort of persons thought to have had little or no exposure to the substance under investigation, but otherwise similar. Alternatively, subgroups within the cohort may be compared with each other.