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IJE Advance Access originally published online on May 27, 2004
International Journal of Epidemiology 2004 33(6):1362-1372; doi:10.1093/ije/dyh229
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IJE vol.33 no.6 © International Epidemiological Association 2004; all rights reserved.

Theory and Methods

Methodological and quality issues in epidemiological studies of acute lower respiratory infections in children in developing countries

Claudio F Lanata1, Igor Rudan2,3, Cynthia Boschi-Pinto4, Lana Tomaskovic4, Thomas Cherian5, Martin Weber4 and Harry Campbell2

1 Instituto de Investigacion Nutricional, AP 18-0191, Lima 18, Peru
2 Public Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh Medical School, Teviot Place, EH8 9AG, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
3 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health 'Andrija Stampar', Rockefellerova 4, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
4 Child and Adolescent Health and Development, World Health Organization, Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
5 Vaccines and Biologicals, World Health Organization, Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland

Correspondence: Dr Harry Campbell, Public Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh Medical School, Teviot Place, EH8 9AG, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. E-mail: Harry.Campbell{at}ed.ac.uk

Acute respiratory infections are the most important single cause of global burden of disease in young children globally and a major cause of child mortality. A recent review of studies reporting the incidence of acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI) in young children in the developing world was carried out by the WHO Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group in order to inform global burden of disease estimates. The review highlighted the low number of community-based longitudinal studies of ALRI incidence in young children which met minimum quality criteria. It underscored the need to give attention to issues of study design and the reporting of a basic minimum dataset which describes circumstances under which the studies were being conducted and the key design features of the study which may influence the ALRI estimate. This paper aims to provide methodological guidelines for the design, conduct, and reporting of epidemiological studies of ALRI in under-5s in developing countries. It discusses determinants of study quality related to both study design and statistical analysis and also issues requiring further research. It is hoped that these guidelines will stimulate further work in this field and encourage the publication of reports which contain sufficient data to permit a meaningful meta-analysis of the data, thus forming the basis of more reliable future estimates of global burden of ALRI.

Accepted 14 April 2004


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