Back to the basics: epidemiology in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

Good epidemiological methods and appropriate statistical analysis are cornerstones of any valid, reliable and publishable epidemiological study. This editorial summarizes epidemiological studies published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (12 issues, May 2005--April 2006) with respect to study objective, type and design. A significant proportion of these studies started off with a single study group. Drawing on this finding, various methodological aspects of choosing a sampling frame and of sampling methods are reviewed.