Types of human studies on cancer risk
Many kinds of studies can be done in humans. Cancer prevention studies may observe people doing what they always do and compare certain activities to how many of the people get cancer. This helps them to find out if cancer risk might be linked to what they do. Or the study may offer something new (a drug, method, activity, etc.) for one group of people, and then compare them to a similar group that did nothing different.
Most human studies can be classed as either studies in which people are observed (watched), or studies in which something is done (called intervention studies).
- An observation study about cancer risk asks questions about habits and health and looks to see if there are differences in cancer risk that may be linked to these factors.
- A clinical trial on cancer risk is one in which the researchers ask healthy volunteers to do something to see if it makes a difference in their cancer risk. (This is different from a clinical study, a more general term that includes clinical trials as well as other less careful forms of research. Clinical studies can be medical reports describing a group of patients, or even one person’s medical experience.)
Learning About New Ways to Prevent Cancer
- Learning About New Ways to Prevent Cancer
- Look at where the information came from
- Look at the science behind the prevention method
- Types of human studies on cancer risk
- Studies that observe humans
- Human testing: Clinical trials
- A closer look at the evidence
- Other questions about studies on new ways to prevent cancer
- What does this mean to you?
- To learn more
- References
- Appendix A
The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and master's-prepared nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.
Last Medical Review: October 9, 2014 Last Revised: May 21, 2015
American Cancer Society medical information is copyrighted material. For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.