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Descriptive study
designs include case reports, case series, incidence studies, and ecologic
studies. The case report is the most elementary study design in the
literature. It generally describes an injury or injuries to one or two
individuals that have been identified in a medical setting. There is also
usually a unique feature to the noted injury (by cause, by nature of injury,
etc.). The case series design is an extension of the case report. In a case
series, a number of events are described. These events usually have been
observed over a set period of time (such as one year) and are identified
from one reporting source (e.g. a hospital). The descriptive epidemiology
study is noted by the collection of injuries over a defined population base
and by the use of denominator data to determine rates. The most frequent
information generated from these designs are incidence rates for injuries.
The ecologic study is a hypothesis generating study. Usually using
group-level data, it examines if two factors are correlated with each other.
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