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Methodology

Section edited by: Valentina Baccolini, Renata Yokota, Romeo Patini, Germain Honvo, Gabriel O Dida, Sarah Cuschieri, Finaba Berete, Jérôme Antoine and Boni Alé.

This section welcomes articles describing how to do research with a particular focus on public health methods, including epidemiological study designs (observational and experimental), review and meta-analysis, and statistical tools.  We are particularly interested in manuscripts that introduce early career researcher to specific methodological topics and give them guidance on how to do research.

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  1. Overweight and obesity have a strong socioeconomic profile. Unhealthy behaviors like insufficient physical activity and an unbalanced diet, which are causal factors of overweight and obesity, tend to be more p...

    Authors: Suzannah D’Hooghe, Yasemin Inaç, Eva De Clercq, Benedicte Deforche, Sarah Dury, Stefanie Vandevijvere, Nico Van de Weghe, Delfien Van Dyck and Karin De Ridder
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:219
    Content type: Study protocol Published on:

  2. There have been worldwide changes in the researches on hantaviruses in the past several decades. Nevertheless, there are few bibliometric analysis studies this field. We aim to evaluate and visualize the resea...

    Authors: Xiao Wei, Xinlou Li, Shuxuan Song, Xiaohui Wen, Tiezhi Jin, Chenxi Zhao, Xubin Wu, Kun Liu and Zhongjun Shao
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:218
    Content type: Research Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Archives of Public Health 2022 80:236

  4. Burden of disease analyses quantify population health and provide comprehensive overviews of the health status of countries or specific population groups. The comparative risk assessment (CRA) methodology is c...

    Authors: Dietrich Plass, Henk Hilderink, Heli Lehtomäki, Simon Øverland, Terje A. Eikemo, Taavi Lai, Vanessa Gorasso and Brecht Devleesschauwer
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:148
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  5. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major shocks in mortality trends in many countries. Yet few studies have evaluated the heterogeneity of the mortality shocks at the sub-national level, rigorously accounting fo...

    Authors: Benjamin-Samuel Schlüter, Bruno Masquelier and Carlo Giovanni Camarda
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:130
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Contact tracing is one of the main public health tools in the control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). A centralized contact tracing system was developed in Belgium in 2020. We aim to evaluate the perfo...

    Authors: Kristiaan Proesmans, Sharon Hancart, Toon Braeye, Sofieke Klamer, Emmanuel Robesyn, Achille Djiena, Frances De Leeuw, Romain Mahieu, Alex Dreuw, Naima Hammami, Dirk Wildemeersch, Laura Cornelissen and Dieter Van Cauteren
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:118
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  7. Although statistical procedures for pooling of several epidemiological metrics are generally available in statistical packages, those for meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy studies including options for...

    Authors: Victoria Nyawira Nyaga and Marc Arbyn
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:95
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Archives of Public Health 2022 80:216

  8. The disability weight is an essential factor to estimate the healthy time that is lost due to living with a certain state of illness. A 2014 review showed a considerable variation in methods used to derive dis...

    Authors: Periklis Charalampous, Suzanne Polinder, Jördis Wothge, Elena von der Lippe and Juanita A. Haagsma
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:91
    Content type: Systematic review Published on:

  10. Insomnia is a common prevalent sleep disorder. Difficulty maintaining sleep or poor in quality in insomnia caused by disrupted or misaligned circadian rhythms may play an important role in the development of a...

    Authors: Lihua Wang, Shengkui Zhang, Miao Yu and Juxiang Yuan
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:80
    Content type: Research Published on:

  11. Systems science approaches have demonstrated effectiveness in identifying underlying drivers of complex problems and facilitating the emergence of potential interventions that are locally tailored, feasible, s...

    Authors: Kristy A. Bolton, Jillian Whelan, Penny Fraser, Colin Bell, Steven Allender and Andrew D. Brown
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:72
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  12. Sexual harassment among female employees in the hospitality industry is a complex phenomenon, and it has ramifications for employment, psychological, physical, and reproductive health. Nevertheless, our interp...

    Authors: Mulugeta Dile Worke, Zewdie Birhanu Koricha and Gurmesa Tura Debelew
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:59
    Content type: Research Published on:

  13. Indoor air pollution (IAP) remains a major global public health hazard more so in developing countries where use of fossil fuels is still very common. However, despite the popularity of kerosene and fuelwood a...

    Authors: Gabriel O. Dida, Patrick O. Lutta, Paul O. Abuom, Tomislav Mestrovic and Douglas N. Anyona
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:46
    Content type: Research Published on:

  14. In Belgium, the first COVID-19 death was reported on 10 March 2020. Nursing home (NH) residents are particularly vulnerable for COVID-19, making it essential to follow-up the spread of COVID-19 in this setting...

    Authors: Eline Vandael, Katrien Latour, Esma Islamaj, Laura Int Panis, Milena Callies, Freek Haarhuis, Kristiaan Proesmans, Brecht Devleesschauwer, Javiera Rebolledo Gonzalez, Alice Hannecart, Romain Mahieu, Louise de Viron, Etienne De Clercq, Anne Kongs, Naïma Hammami, Jean-Marc François…
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:45
    Content type: Research Published on:

  15. Higher availability of administrative data and better infrastructure for electronic surveys allow for large sample sizes in evaluations of national and other large scale policies. Although larger datasets have...

    Authors: Torleif Halkjelsvik, Antonio Gasparrini and Rannveig Kaldager Hart
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:36
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  16. The association between bivariate variables may not necessarily be homogeneous throughout the whole range of the variables. We present a new technique to describe inhomogeneity in the association of bivariate ...

    Authors: Rebekka Mumm, Christiane Scheffler and Michael Hermanussen
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:30
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  17. Participant enrolment, assessment and/or delivery of intervention in many clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic were severely impacted by public health measures limiting physical contact. This report de...

    Authors: Kristen Grove, Megan Harrold, Sheeraz Mohd, Varsha Natarajan, Elizabeth Hurn, Jane Pearce, Vinicius Cavalheri, Carol Watson and Dale W. Edgar
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:14
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  18. The capacity to use data linkage and artificial intelligence to estimate and predict health indicators varies across European countries. However, the estimation of health indicators from linked administrative ...

    Authors: Romana Haneef, Mariken Tijhuis, Rodolphe Thiébaut, Ondřej Májek, Ivan Pristaš, Hanna Tolonen and Anne Gallay
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:9
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Archives of Public Health 2022 80:67

  19. Data on functioning and disability collected at population level is essential to complement mortality and morbidity, to estimate rehabilitation needs of countries and regions and to monitor the Convention on t...

    Authors: Carla Sabariego, Carolina Fellinghauer, Lindsay Lee, Kaloyan Kamenov, Aleksandra Posarac, Jerome Bickenbach, Nenad Kostanjsek, Somnath Chatterji and Alarcos Cieza
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2022 80:6
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  20. Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a public health problem in Europe, affecting all age groups. Several MetS definitions are available. The aim of this study was to compare four different MetS definitions in the Fin...

    Authors: Elsi Haverinen, Laura Paalanen, Luigi Palmieri, Alicia Padron-Monedero, Isabel Noguer-Zambrano, Rodrigo Sarmiento Suárez and Hanna Tolonen
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:231
    Content type: Research Published on:

  21. Standardization and normalization of continuous covariates are used to ease the interpretation of regression coefficients. Although these scaling techniques serve different purposes, they are sometimes used in...

    Authors: Masayoshi Oka
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:226
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  22. Information for Action! is a Joint Action (JA-InfAct) on Health Information promoted by the EU Member States and funded by the European Commission within the Third EU Health Programme (2014–2020) to create and...

    Authors: Juan González-García, Francisco Estupiñán-Romero, Carlos Tellería-Orriols, Javier González-Galindo, Luigi Palmieri, Andrea Faragalli, Ivan Pristās, Jakov Vuković, Janis Misinš, Irisa Zile and Enrique Bernal-Delgado
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:221
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Archives of Public Health 2022 80:116

  23. SARS-CoV-2 strains evolve continuously and accumulate mutations in their genomes over the course of the pandemic. The severity of a SARS-CoV-2 infection could partly depend on these viral genetic characteristi...

    Authors: Nina Van Goethem, Ben Serrien, Mathil Vandromme, Chloé Wyndham-Thomas, Lucy Catteau, Ruben Brondeel, Sofieke Klamer, Marjan Meurisse, Lize Cuypers, Emmanuel André, Koen Blot and Herman Van Oyen
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:185
    Content type: Study protocol Published on:

  24. Using publicly available data on the number of new hospitalisations we use a newly developed statistical model to produce a phase portrait to monitor the epidemic allowing for assessing whether or not interven...

    Authors: Christel Faes, Niel Hens and Marius Gilbert
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:164
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  25. The Model Disability Survey (MDS) is the current standard recommended by WHO to collect functioning and disability data. Answering calls from countries requesting a version to be implemented as a module that c...

    Authors: Carla Sabariego, Carolina Fellinghauer, Lindsay Lee, Aleksandra Posarac, Jerome Bickenbach, Nenad Kostanjsek, Somnath Chatterji, Kaloyan Kamenov and Alarcos Cieza
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:128
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  26. The InfAct (Information for Action) project is a European Commission Joint Action on Health Information which has promoted the potential role of burden of disease (BoD) approaches to improve the current European ...

    Authors: Romana Haneef, Jürgen Schmidt, Anne Gallay, Brecht Devleesschauwer, Ian Grant, Alexander Rommel, Grant MA Wyper, Herman Van Oyen, Henk Hilderink, Thomas Ziese and John Newton
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:126
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  27. Early in the pandemic, inadequate SARS-CoV-2 testing limited understanding of transmission. Chief among barriers to large-scale testing was unknown feasibility, particularly in non-urban areas. Our objective w...

    Authors: Ayesha Appa, Gabriel Chamie, Aenor Sawyer, Kimberly Baltzell, Kathryn Dippell, Salu Ribeiro, Elias Duarte, Joanna Vinden, CLIAHUB Consortium, Jonathan Kramer-Feldman, Shahryar Rahdari, Doug MacIntosh, Katherine Nicholson, Jonathan Im, Diane Havlir and Bryan Greenhouse
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:125
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  29. Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Belgian government has implemented various infection prevention and control measures. This study assessed the extent to which the general population in Belgium adh...

    Authors: Joris Adriaan Frank van Loenhout, Kirsten Vanderplanken, Bénédicte Scheen, Stephan Van den Broucke and Isabelle Aujoulat
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:74
    Content type: Research Published on:

  30. The deepening population aging is urging policy makers to launch delayed retirement initiative, when the society is faced with unprecedented challenges of shrinking labor supply, heavier pension burdens and sl...

    Authors: Jiannan Li, Bocong Yuan and Junbang Lan
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:59
    Content type: Research Published on:

  31. Systematic reviews, considered the gold standard for the assessment of scientific evidence, may present conflicting findings for the same clinical issue, and such dissent may be justified by the forms of elabo...

    Authors: Amanda Oliveira Lyrio, Simone Seixas da Cruz, Isaac Suzart Gomes-Filho, Viviane Seixas Silva Silveira, Elivan Silva Souza, Josicélia Estrela Tuy Batista, Ana Claudia Morais Godoy Figueiredo and Mauricio Gomes Pereira
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:43
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  32. Homelessness is often described as both a driver and a consequence of poor health, social exclusion and economic marginalisation. The present protocol provides a detailed description of the study Examining the he...

    Authors: Sonia Lech, Liane Schenk, Jenny De la Torre Castro and Daniel Schindel
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:28
    Content type: Study protocol Published on:

  33. The Most Significant Change is a story-based evaluation approach used in many international development programs. This practice review summarises practical experience with the approach in complex health interv...

    Authors: Kendra Tonkin, Hilah Silver, Juan Pimentel, Anne Marie Chomat, Ivan Sarmiento, Loubna Belaid, Anne Cockcroft and Neil Andersson
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:18
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  34. Hate crimes have raised in Spain and the gender and sexuality-based conflicts persist worldwide which leads to this problem having an effect on health and wellbeing. Following a focus of transforming Higher Ed...

    Authors: Elena María Gallardo-Nieto, Aitor Gómez, Regina Gairal-Casadó and María del Mar Ramis-Salas
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:16
    Content type: Research Published on:

  35. Since severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was firstly reported in Wuhan City, China in December 2019, Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) that is caused by SARS-CoV-2 is predomi...

    Authors: Jianli Liu, Yuan Zhou, Chuanyu Ye, Guangming Zhang, Feng Zhang and Chunjuan Song
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:8
    Content type: Research Published on:

  36. Vulnerability at the individual, family, community or organization level affects access and utilization of health services, and is a key consideration for health equity. Several frameworks have been used to ex...

    Authors: Neema Murembe, Teddy Kyomuhangi, Kimberly Manalili, Florence Beinempaka, Primrose Nakazibwe, Clare Kyokushaba, Basil Tibanyendera, Jennifer L. Brenner and Eleanor Turyakira
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:4
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  37. The global increase in the utilization of non - prescribed antibiotics (NPA), is concerning, with high persistence within the low and middle-income countries (LMICs). With a negative impact on the health of in...

    Authors: Neusa F. Torres, Buyisile Chibi, Desmond Kuupiel, Vernon P. Solomon, Tivani P. Mashamba-Thompson and Lyn E. Middleton
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2021 79:2
    Content type: Systematic review Published on:

  38. Summary measures of population health are increasingly used in different public health reporting systems for setting priorities for health care and social service delivery and planning.

    Authors: Elena von der Lippe, Brecht Devleesschauwer, Michelle Gourley, Juanita Haagsma, Henk Hilderink, Michael Porst, Annelene Wengler, Grant Wyper and Ian Grant
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:137
    Content type: Research Published on:

  39. Increased Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) coverage improves health status and the survival of people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) as a result, reproductive health needs of the clients are incre...

    Authors: Getu Mosisa, Reta Tsegaye, Bizuneh Wakuma, Diriba Mulisa, Werku Etefa, Muktar Abadiga, Ginenus Fekadu, Adugna Oluma and Ebisa Turi
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:123
    Content type: Systematic review Published on:

  40. In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, caused by a novel coronavirus, it was of great importance to rapidly collect as much accurate information as possible in order to characterize the public health threat and...

    Authors: Nina Van Goethem, Aline Vilain, Chloé Wyndham-Thomas, Jessika Deblonde, Nathalie Bossuyt, Tinne Lernout, Javiera Rebolledo Gonzalez, Sophie Quoilin, Vincent Melis and Dominique Van Beckhoven
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:121
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Archives of Public Health 2021 79:147

  41. Health administrative data were increasingly used for chronic diseases (CDs) surveillance purposes. This cross sectional study explored the agreement between Belgian compulsory health insurance (BCHI) data and...

    Authors: Finaba Berete, Stefaan Demarest, Rana Charafeddine, Olivier Bruyère and Johan Van der Heyden
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:120
    Content type: Research Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Archives of Public Health 2020 78:136

  42. Air pollution, green space and smoking are known to affect human health. However, less is known about their underlying biological mechanisms. One of these mechanisms could be biological aging. In this study, w...

    Authors: Pauline Hautekiet, Tim S. Nawrot, Stefaan Demarest, Johan Van der Heyden, Ilse Van Overmeire, Eva M. De Clercq and Nelly D. Saenen
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:105
    Content type: Research Published on:

  43. Psoriasis (PsO) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) are chronic diseases that affect patients’ quality of life. The purpose of the present study was to develop a pilot outcome-based, patient-centric management model...

    Authors: Simon Francis Thomsen, Lone Skov, Lars Erik Kristensen, Morten Størling Hedegaard, Jakob Kjellberg, Tanja Schjødt Jørgensen, Søren Brenøe and Rikke Dodge
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:95
    Content type: Research Published on:

  44. Acceptance of Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) as a measure of health summary and progression has increased over the years, which in turn has instigated comparative analysis studies of DALY across time and...

    Authors: Nitya Saxena and Deepak Sethia
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:91
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  45. Australia’s 1996 national burden of disease (BoD) study was one of the first in the world and updates have continued over the following two decades with the fifth study now underway. The studies adapt the glob...

    Authors: Lynelle Moon, Michelle Gourley, John Goss, Miriam Lum On, Paula Laws, Anna Reynolds and Richard Juckes
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:88
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  46. The Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) is a measure to prioritize in the public health field. In the Netherlands, the DALY estimates are calculated since 1997 and are included in the Public Health Status and...

    Authors: Henk B. M. Hilderink, Marjanne H. D. Plasmans, M. J. J. C. (René) Poos, Petra E. D. Eysink and Ronald Gijsen
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:85
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  48. In 1995, Eide and Gefeller introduced the concepts of sequential and average attributable fractions as methods to partition the risk of disease among differing exposures. In particular, sequential attributable...

    Authors: John Ferguson, Maurice O’Connell and Martin O’Donnell
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:67
    Content type: Research Published on:

  49. Many diet-related surveys have been conducted in England over the past four to five decades. Yet, diet-related ill-health is estimated to cost the NHS £5.8 billion annually. There has been no recent assessment...

    Authors: Monique Campbell, Dianna Smith, Janis Baird, Christina Vogel and Emeritus Graham Moon
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:66
    Content type: Methodology Published on:

  50. Body fat estimation allows measuring changes over time attributed to interventions and treatments in different settings such as hospitals, clinical practice, nursing homes and research. However, only few studi...

    Authors: Erika Aparecida Silveira, Larissa Silva Barbosa, Ana Paula Santos Rodrigues, Matias Noll and Cesar De Oliveira
    Citation: Archives of Public Health 2020 78:65
    Content type: Research Published on:

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ISSN: 2049-3258