About 8000 clinical trials are undertaken annually in all areas of medicine, from the treatment of acne to the prevention of cancer. Correct interpretation of the data from such trials depends largely on adequate design and on performing the appropriate statistical analyses. In this book, the statistical aspects of both the design and analysis of trials are described, with particular emphasis on recently developed methods of analysis.

This primer has been designed as a self-instructional text which serves to introduce the reader to both the principles of statistical modelling of covariance structures and to the use of the EQS software package. It is divided into three parts - the first covering the basic ideas and language of covariance structure modelling together with an introduction to the EQS package. The second section covers a wide variety of models suitable for cross-sectional and longitudinal data and the final section discusses a wide variety of practical problems. This book should be of interest to researchers in psychology, sociology and medicine who use the EQS software; applied and consultant statisticians.

Life course epidemiology is concerned with the origins of risk, resilience, and the processes of ageing, and how this information can be of value in a public health context - particularly for preventive health care. Its challenge is to discover, develop and analyse sources of data that cover many years of life, especially the early developmental period when, it is thought, some fundamental aspects of lifetime health begin. It also analyses genetic propensity and environmental exposures. The rapid development of life course epidemiology, in parallel with new work on developmental biology and the biology of ageing, has bought innovative and ingenious methods of data collection. These require new methodological techniques for the design of observational and quasi-experimental studies of life course pathways to adult health. This book describes these developments, together with arguments for improving the measurement of the social environment and its role in developing individual vulnerability or adaptation. The development of bio-bank large-scale population studies for the investigation of genetic effects is discussed, alongside the challenges this creates for the epidemiologist. The changing design of studies, increasing flow of longitudinal data, management of data, analytic challenges, timing, and both traditional and more recent methods of managing these features in the study of causality, are discussed. Life course epidemiology has an essential role in developing methods to evaluate precisely the impact of interacting developmental, environmental, and genetic effects, knowledge of which is fundamental for the design of effective prevention strategies in public health, as well as for the advancement of understanding in the broader spheres of health and medicine.

Fully updated, this revised edition describes the statistical aspects of both the design and analysis of trials, with particular emphasis on the more recent methods of analysis.About 8000 clinical trials are undertaken annually in all areas of medicine, from the treatment of acne to the prevention of cancer. Correct interpretation of the data from such trials depends largely on adequate design and on performing the appropriate statistical analyses. This book provides a useful guide to medical statisticians and others faced with the often difficult problems of designing and analysing clinical trials.