Methods for generating hypotheses in human enteric illness outbreak investigations: a scoping review of the evidence.

ABSTRACT: Enteric illness outbreaks are complex events, therefore, outbreak investigators use many different hypothesis generation methods depending on the situation. This scoping review was conducted to describe methods used to generate a hypothesis during enteric illness outbreak investigations. The search included five databases and grey literature for articles published between 1 January 2000 and 2 May 2015. Relevance screening and article characterisation were conducted by two independent reviewers using pretested forms. There were 903 outbreaks that described hypothesis generation methods and 33 papers which focused on the evaluation of hypothesis generation methods. Common hypothesis generation methods described are analytic studies (64.8%), descriptive epidemiology (33.7%), food or environme

SUBMITTER: Ickert C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6805753 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature