Retrospective Observational Study

A Retrospective Observational Study is an observational study that analyzes information that was not intentionally collected to test a hypothesis.

• AKA: Post-hoc Analysis.
• Context:
  • It can analysis by a Retrospective Data Analysis.
  • It can be an Empirical Experiment Task (e.g. against Benchmark Data).
  • It can ... is a group-based study where study group assignment follows study group observation.
• Example(s):
  • a Case Study.
  • a Retrospective Cohort Study.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Prospective Observational Study.
  • a Prospective Study.
  • a Controlled Study.
• See: Experimental Analysis, Post Hoc Fallacy, Retrospective Data Analysis Task.

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References

2009

• http://www.health.state.mn.us/newbornscreening/glossary.html#retrospective
  • Retrospective Study - This is a study that looks backwards in time. For example, this type of study might look at individuals who already are known to have a disease to try to figure out why they have the disease.
• (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=retrospective
  • S: (n) retrospective (an exhibition of a representative selection of an artist's life work)
  • S: (adj) retrospective (concerned with or related to the past). “retrospective self-justification"

2008

• (Douma et al., 2008) ⇒ Stella Douma, Konstantinos Petidis, Michael Doumas, Panagiota Papaefthimiou, Areti Triantafyllou, Niki Kartali, Nikolaos Papadopoulos, Konstantinos Vogiatzis, and Chrysanthos Zamboulis. (2008). “Prevalence of Primary Hyperaldosteronism in Resistant Hypertension: A Retrospective Observational Study." The Lancet 371(9628).

2000

• (Witten & Frank, 2000) ⇒ Ian H. Witten, and Eibe Frank. (2000). “Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques with Java implementations." Morgan Kaufmann.
  • The data used for mining has almost certainly not been gathered expressly for that purpose.

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