Premium
Separated at Birth: Statisticians, Social Scientists, and Causality in Health Services Research
Author(s) -
Dowd Bryan E.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
health services research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.706
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1475-6773
pISSN - 0017-9124
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6773.2010.01203.x
Subject(s) - causality (physics) , variety (cybernetics) , psychological intervention , field (mathematics) , causal inference , health services research , psychology , health services , data science , management science , public relations , medicine , computer science , political science , nursing , public health , psychiatry , economics , environmental health , population , physics , mathematics , pathology , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , pure mathematics
Objective. Health services research is a field of study that brings together experts from a wide variety of academic disciplines. It also is a field that places a high priority on empirical analysis. Many of the questions posed by health services researchers involve the effects of treatments, patient and provider characteristics, and policy interventions on outcomes of interest. These are causal questions. Yet many health services researchers have been trained in disciplines that are reluctant to use the language of causality, and the approaches to causal questions are discipline specific, often with little overlap. How did this situation arise? This paper traces the roots of the division and some recent attempts to remedy the situation. Data Sources and Settings. Existing literature. Study Design. Review of the literature.