Build a plan around your own course
An effective epidemiology study plan starts with the material you are actually expected to learn. Courses differ in their emphasis: one may devote substantial time to causal inference, while another may focus more on study design, screening or interpreting statistical results. Use your course outline, lecture objectives and assessment guidance to define the boundaries. If an assessment format or requirement is unclear, check with your course team rather than assuming.
Set aside three sessions a week for six weeks. The schedule below uses sessions of 60–90 minutes, so it can fit around other study. If you have less time, keep the order and shorten the sessions; if you have more, add practice questions and review rather than collecting extra summaries. Each session should end with something you can check: a solved calculation, a comparison table, an explanation from memory or a marked answer.
Before starting, gather your lecture slides, reading notes and any worked examples. In MySummaries, a board built from those materials can keep definitions, calculations and interpretation rules together:
| Measure | Numerator and denominator |
|---|---|
| Point prevalence | Existing cases ÷ population at a specified time |
| Incidence proportion | New cases ÷ people at risk at the start of a defined period |
| Incidence rate | New cases ÷ person-time at risk |
- Selection bias — selection into the study or analysis distorts the exposure–outcome comparison
- Information bias — measurement or classification differs in a way that distorts results
- A confounder is associated with exposure and outcome, and is not an intermediate on the causal pathway
- Risk ratio — risk in exposed ÷ risk in unexposed; commonly estimated in a cohort study
- Odds ratio — odds of exposure among cases ÷ odds among controls; commonly estimated in a case-control study
- For a rare outcome, an odds ratio may approximate a risk ratio; it is not automatically the same measure
Read the estimate, its confidence interval, the study population and the limitations together. Statistical significance alone does not establish clinical or public-health importance.
For each design, record how participants are selected, when exposure and outcome are measured, and which measures can be estimated.
Use the board as a working reference, not as a replacement for your course material. Keep the source clear when your lecturer uses a particular definition or convention. Add a short example beside each formula and note the units: a rate has person-time in its denominator, while a proportion does not.
A six-week schedule
Treat the session lengths as focused study time. Take a short break between blocks if needed. At the start of each session, spend five minutes recalling the previous topic without looking; finish by recording errors and the next task.
Week 1: Set the boundaries and learn the measures
Session 1 — 60 minutes: List course objectives and assessment requirements from official course materials (20 minutes). Sort them into themes such as frequency, study design, bias, screening and statistics (25 minutes). Mark unfamiliar terms for follow-up (15 minutes).
Session 2 — 60 minutes: Study prevalence, incidence proportion and incidence rate from your notes (25 minutes). Work through two numerical examples for each measure, making sure the denominator and time period are explicit (25 minutes). Write a one-sentence interpretation for each result (10 minutes).
Session 3 — 60 minutes: Study risk ratios, odds ratios and risk differences if they are in your syllabus (25 minutes). Solve three examples using the table layout taught in your course (25 minutes). Close your notes and explain when each measure is used (10 minutes).
Week 2: Compare study designs and identify bias
Session 1 — 75 minutes: Make a comparison table for the designs in your course: for example, cross-sectional, case-control, cohort and randomised trial. Include participant selection, timing of measurement, a suitable question and a limitation. Use 45 minutes to build it and 30 minutes to recall it without the notes.
Session 2 — 75 minutes: Study selection bias, information bias and misclassification. For each, write a short scenario, identify how the distortion could arise and state which direction of effect—if any—you can justify. Do not label every limitation as bias without explaining the mechanism.
Session 3 — 75 minutes: Practise identifying a design from a methods paragraph (30 minutes). Then write two short answers explaining why the design fits the question and what it cannot establish (35 minutes). Use the last 10 minutes to check terminology against your notes.
Week 3: Work on confounding and statistical uncertainty
Session 1 — 75 minutes: Learn your course’s definition of confounding. Draw a causal diagram for two examples from your notes, identifying exposure, outcome and a plausible confounder. Check that you have not mistaken an intermediate variable for a confounder.
Session 2 — 75 minutes: Review the adjustment methods covered in your course, such as stratification or regression. For each worked example, state what was adjusted for and compare the crude and adjusted estimates. Do not infer that adjustment has removed all confounding just because estimates changed.
Session 3 — 75 minutes: Practise confidence-interval interpretation and any statistical tests required by your course. For each result, explain the estimate, interval and practical meaning. Where relevant, distinguish statistical evidence from the size or importance of an effect.
Week 4: Apply screening and causal reasoning
Session 1 — 75 minutes: If screening is in your syllabus, revise sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. Use a 2 × 2 table, label each cell and calculate all four measures from a worked example. Explain why predictive values depend on prevalence.
Session 2 — 75 minutes: Study causal inference or evidence appraisal using the frameworks in your course. For a published or supplied study, identify the question, population, exposure, outcome, main estimate and important limitations. Separate what the data show from what you can reasonably conclude.
Session 3 — 75 minutes: Complete a mixed set of course questions (45 minutes). Review every answer, including correct guesses (20 minutes). Turn each error into a precise prompt, such as “What denominator is used for incidence rate?”, rather than a vague note like “revise incidence”.
A lecture picker can help you decide what to revisit when a board section is repeatedly difficult. MySummaries can use weak cards and lost marks to flag a section for a focused audio review:
Confounding · Struggling — getting 4 of 9 cards wrong and losing marks on recent practice answers
Use that prompt to review the relevant source notes, not just to replay a summary. Pause after each key distinction and explain it aloud, then solve a new example. If the issue is an unclear definition, repair the board. If you understand the concept but misread questions, practise identifying exactly what each question asks.
Week 5: Practise complete answers
Session 1 — 90 minutes: Complete a timed practice set using the timing and question types specified by your course, if provided. If there is no published timing guidance, practise a manageable set without treating your own timing as an official requirement. Mark it against the material and criteria you have been given.
Session 2 — 75 minutes: Review the set question by question. For each lost mark, record whether the cause was knowledge, calculation, interpretation or wording. Rewrite the answer in a complete form. Check calculations from the original data rather than copying a result.
Session 3 — 75 minutes: Repeat questions on your two weakest themes, then mix them with familiar topics. Explain why a tempting alternative is wrong; this is particularly useful for distinguishing related measures and study designs.
Week 6: Consolidate and test readiness
Session 1 — 60 minutes: Use closed-book recall for core definitions, denominators and interpretation rules. Check against your course notes and correct imprecise wording.
Session 2 — 90 minutes: Complete a final practice paper or equivalent set in the format your course actually uses. Follow official instructions where available. Do not add invented exam rules to your practice routine.
Session 3 — 60 minutes: Review errors and repeat only the calculations or explanations that remain uncertain. Finish by making a short list of items to check in your official course materials, including any assessment details you still do not know.
Review evidence, not just hours
At the end of each week, note the sessions completed, the topics practised and the errors that recurred. A score is useful only alongside the question type and the reason marks were lost. The example below shows a practice dashboard; its percentages and counts are personal progress signals, not predicted exam frequencies or external standards. MySummaries can organise this review from marked practice:
If a topic remains weak, schedule a repair session within the next week: reread the relevant source, explain the idea from memory, solve a fresh problem, and check the answer. If you repeatedly lose marks despite knowing the content, practise interpreting the question and structuring the response. If errors are mostly arithmetic, show each step and verify the denominator and units before interpreting the result.
Keep the schedule flexible. A topic not taught in your course does not become compulsory because it appears here as an example; conversely, add any course-specific subject that is missing. The aim is a cycle of source-based study, retrieval, application and correction—not simply six weeks of reading.
How MySummaries helps
Build a revision board from your own epidemiology PDFs, slides or photographed notes, then use it to generate flashcards, marked written practice and examiner-voice audio for the topics your review shows need work. Start at portal.mysummaries.app.