What is a prospective study?
Perspective study, freely defined, is a study that begins at present and continues in time. It is distinguished from a retrospective study that focuses on the well -known outcome and determines the factors that have affected the outcome. A retrospective study already has a material that can help to determine the cause and consequence, but a potential researcher collects information during the experiment or study. This term is defined freely because there are many permutations of both future and retrospective studies, and can be very different in how they are performed.
Understanding the term "prospector" is useful to get a feeling of prospective studies. The prospector is looking for things that he hopes to find, such as gold or oil. The researcher performs almost the same task by defining what he hopes to see and then test the matter. Sometimes research is open to many prospects or can be limited to simple questions: "Does this drug or treatment work?"
Certainly, a common reason to carry out a future study is to get information about how some kind of treatment will work. For many drug experiments, scientists have compiled a cohort or group people who have some similarities as all suffering from the same disease, all the same sex or all close age. Other cohorts are possible, depending on the interest of the researcher and the goals of the study. It should be noted that the terms 'studies' and 'experiment' are often differentiated, and the experiment refers specifically to research that uses some type of treatment.
In a prospective experiment, due to the co -cortee collected, scientists then manage some treatment for a specified period of time, carefully investigate and record the results of each individual. When experimenting with drugs, half of the subjects usually get placebo three, so you can find out if there is any real difference between those who have a real medicine and those whoShe won't receive her. A prospective experiment may take several weeks, months or several years.
A real prospective study may take years. Scientists could simply create a cohort and see if certain things were developing over time without using treatment. Maintaining a cohort can be demanding and as the studies extend, people fall out or the complexities of life make it difficult to determine the results. However, the results of long -term prospective studies may be fascinating, although it can be difficult, time consuming and expensive.
Usually, if people want to evaluate the results, they will look back. For example, if a researcher wants to study risk factors for lung cancer, she could compile information about the patients who died and determine what factors each entity had in common with others. This would not show all the cancer capabilities, but it may be a useful way to evaluate the correlation. Medicines can also be studied retrospectively to see if they have undesirable or other favorableEffects that were previously unknown, but new drugs always require prospective study.