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Next Page Course Contents Section Contents Next Section Case Control Studies![]() Case control studies are studies in which patients who already have a certain condition are compared with people who do not. For example: a study on which lung cancer patients are asked how much they smoked in the past and the answers are compared with a sample of the general population would be a case control study. Case control studies are less reliable than either randomized controlled trials or cohort studies. Just because there is a statistical relationship between two conditions does not mean that one condition actually caused the other. For instance, lung cancer rates are higher for people without a college education (who tend to smoke more), but that does not mean that someone can reduce his or her cancer risk just by getting a college education. The main advantages of case control studies are:
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