This text addresses many important methodological issues faced in contemporary
social epidemiologic research. The motivation for assembling this material is to
increase the potential for social epidemiology to contribute meaningfully to public
health knowledge and policy through stronger and clearer methodological
foundations. The field is only a few decades old in its current incarnation, and the
methodological approaches that characterize work in this sub-discipline are still
rapidly evolving. New techniques are continually developed or borrowed from
other disciplines. Nonetheless, the bulk of published research in this area is still
made up of studies for which the inferential content is modest at best. Some of
this ambiguity in interpretation arises from a weak conceptual orientation about
the logic underlying many common methods. This is especially true of regression,
which is seldom taught with a focus on causal inference.