The book is organized so as to address in separate sections first the
preparatory topics of medicine (clinical and epidemiological), science
in general, and statistics (mathematical); then topics of
epidemiological research proper; and, finally, topics of
'meta-epidemiological' clinical research. In those two main sections, a
further grouping is based on the distraction between objects and methods
of study. In this framework, the particular topics are addressed both
descriptively and quasi-prescriptively, commonly with a number of
explicatory annotations.
This book is intended to serve as a handbook for whomever is, in
whatever way, concerned with epidemiological or 'meta-epidemiological'
clinical research. But besides this, it is also intended to serve as a
textbook for students in introductory courses on 'epidemiological'
research - to which end there is a suggested hierarchy of the concepts
that might reasonably be covered.