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Given the large differences in the severity of injury which can
exist, the most appropriate source to identify injuries will
depend to some extent upon the severity of injury that you want
to identify. If you want to evaluate injury deaths, appropriate
sources would be death certificates and coroner's records, and
not surveys. On the other hand if you want to identify
self-treated injuries, then surveys are more appropriate, and
systems based upon hospital records would be inappropriate.
Consider also that surveys provide information on people who have
not been injured. Thus, giving you some assessment of exposure
data. One drawback of injuries identified from medical records,
is that you only know the risk factors for people who have
injuries. You do not know how these factors may differ from the
people who are not injured. This is a crucial point if you want
to be able to identify events that places someone at risk for an
injury and the importance of that risk. This is where the
importance of analytical epidemiologic studies is recognized.
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