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Public Health & Epidemiology vocabulary · Bias, Causation and Data Analysis

Odds ratio

Meaning in public health & epidemiology, with examples

nounCommon term

In public health & epidemiology, odds ratio means: A measure of association that compares the odds of an exposure among cases with the odds among controls, or the odds of an outcome in two groups.

In Turkish: odds oranı, olasılık oranı

How it is used

Shortened to OR and the standard measure in case-control studies and logistic regression. An OR of 1 means no association; above 1 means higher odds, below 1 lower odds. When the outcome is rare, the OR is close to the relative risk.

Example sentences

  1. Eating at the buffet was strongly associated with illness, with an odds ratio of 4.2.

  2. The adjusted odds ratio was 1.8 (95% CI 1.3 to 2.5).

Common collocations

  • adjusted odds ratio
  • crude odds ratio
  • an odds ratio of
  • calculate an odds ratio
  • relative riskThe risk of an outcome in an exposed group divided by the risk in an unexposed group; a value of 2 means the exposed group has twice the risk.
  • case-control studyAn observational study that starts with people who have a disease (cases) and people who do not (controls), then looks back to compare their past exposures.
  • confidence intervalA range of values around an estimate that shows how precise it is; a 95% confidence interval is calculated so that, if a study were repeated many times, 95% of such intervals would contain the true value.
  • associationA statistical link between an exposure and an outcome, meaning they occur together more or less often than chance would predict, whether or not one causes the other.

More terms: Bias, Causation and Data Analysis

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