Which of the following is not included in Bradford Hill's criteria for establishing causation?

INI-CET EXAM -2025

Nursing Research & Statistic

Medium

Appeared in: INI-CET EXAM -2025

Explanation

Sensitivity is not one of the Bradford Hill criteria for establishing causation.
Sensitivity is a statistical measure of a diagnostic test's ability to correctly identify individuals with a disease (true positive rate).
Bradford Hill's criteria are principles used to assess the evidence for a causal relationship between an exposure and an outcome in epidemiology.

Option A: Temporality is a core, and the only essential, criterion in Bradford Hill's list. It states that the cause must precede the effect in time.
Option B: The dose-response relationship, also known as the biological gradient, is one of the nine criteria. It suggests that as the dose of the exposure increases, the risk of the disease also increases.
Option C: Biological plausibility is one of the nine criteria. It means the association should be believable and consistent with current biological knowledge.

Visual 1: Infographic - A circular diagram or flowchart listing the nine Bradford Hill criteria with a brief icon and description for each. This helps in memorizing all the components.
Visual 2: Table - A comparison table contrasting 'Bradford Hill's Criteria for Causation' with 'Measures of Diagnostic Accuracy' (like Sensitivity, Specificity, PPV, NPV) to clarify their different purposes.

Clinical Relevance

Nursing practice connection: This is primarily an exam-oriented knowledge point with limited direct bedside application, so retain Bradford Hill's criteria for causation as background academic context rather than a clinical decision trigger.
Nurses in community health and research roles use these principles to understand risk factors and evaluate the effectiveness of public health interventions.
Understanding causation helps nurses educate patients about lifestyle modifications (e.g., smoking cessation, diet changes) by explaining the strength of evidence linking behaviors to health outcomes.
What if? If a study found an association between a new medication and a side effect but the side effect sometimes appeared before the medication was taken, it would fail the 'Temporality' criterion, making a causal link highly unlikely.

How to Approach the Question

First, identify the core concept of the question, which is 'Bradford Hill's criteria for causation'.
Note the negative keyword 'not'. This means you are looking for the option that does not belong to the group.
Recall or look up the nine criteria established by Bradford Hill.
Systematically evaluate each option against the list of criteria.
Option A (Temporality), B (Dose-response), and C (Biological plausibility) are all well-known criteria.
Option D (Sensitivity) is a term from a different domain of epidemiology—diagnostic test evaluation. Therefore, it is the correct answer as it is not part of the causation criteria.

Concept Tested & Keywords

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