title: What was your question again? Types of medical studies.
abstract: Medical literature comes in all shapes and sizes, from animal studies to prospective clinical trials to retrospective chart reviews. In all of these cases, it is worth asking: What are the intellectual goals of the study: description, hypothesis testing, or hypothesis generating? This differentiation can help shape our view of the success or failure of the scientific effort.
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery, Texas A&M Health Science Center, College of Medicine; and Research Scientist I, Scott and White Memorial Clinic and Hospital, Temple, TX. Electronic address: djupiter@sw.org.
authors.forename: Daniel C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Jupiter
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D006801:Humans; D012107:Research Design
keywords: data exploration; hypothesis generation; hypothesis testing