What is the Rothman principle of causation?
Asked by: Leda Aufderhar | Last update: February 11, 2026Score: 4.6/5 (48 votes)
The Rothman principle of causation, or the Sufficient-Component Cause model, explains that disease or outcomes result from multiple interacting factors (component causes) that together form a "sufficient cause," depicted as a pie where each slice is a component cause; a complete pie (sufficient cause) leads to the outcome, and a factor present in every pie is a necessary cause, highlighting the multifactorial, complex nature of health and disease beyond single causes.
What is the Rothman's model of causality?
One such model was proposed by Rothman in 1976, and has come to be known as the Causal Pies. (42) This model is illustrated in Figure 1.17. An individual factor that contributes to cause disease is shown as a piece of a pie. After all the pieces of a pie fall into place, the pie is complete — and disease occurs.
What is the principle of causation?
The principle of causation is a fundamental concept in both tort and criminal law that establishes a link between a defendant's conduct and the resulting harm or damage. It is crucial in determining liability and ensuring that only those whose actions are sufficiently connected to the harm are held legally responsible.
What is the Bradford Hill criteria for causation?
Specificity: Causation is likely if there is a very specific population at a specific site and disease with no other likely explanation. The more specific an association between a factor and an effect is, the bigger the probability of a causal relationship.
What are the three rules of causation?
The first three criteria are generally considered as requirements for identifying a causal effect: (1) empirical association, (2) temporal priority of the indepen- dent variable, and (3) nonspuriousness. You must establish these three to claim a causal relationship.
Epidemiology (Causal pie epidemiological causation model)
What are the three concepts of causation?
Corres- ponding to these three concepts, are three different putative kinds of causal relationship, scientific causation (which I will also call causal structure), folk attributive causation, and metaphysical causation.
What are the 5 Sir Bradford Hill's nine causal guidelines should be used as rigid criteria to establish cause?
The Bradford Hill criteria include nine viewpoints by which to evaluate human epidemiologic evidence to determine if causation can be deduced: strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment, and analogy.
What are the 4 conditions of causality?
There are four conditions of causality: logical time ordering, correlation, mechanism, and nonspuriousness. Logical time ordering refers to the idea that one variable needs to precede another variable in time for the first variable to influence the second variable.
What does causation mean in simple terms?
In simple terms, causation means one thing directly makes another thing happen (an effect), establishing a clear cause-and-effect link, like how hitting a billiard ball (cause) makes it move (effect). It's about proving that an action or event produced a particular outcome, differentiating it from just two things happening at the same time (correlation).
What are the four elements of causation?
In a typical personal injury case, the plaintiff must prove four key elements: the defendant owed them a duty of care, the defendant breached that duty, this breach caused an injury, and the plaintiff suffered actual damages.
What are the 4 principles of causality?
To establish causality, researchers often use criteria like Bradford Hill's, focusing on Temporality (cause before effect), Consistency (repeated findings), Strength (strong association), and Plausibility/Mechanism (a believable explanation), though other criteria like Dose-Response, Specificity, and Coherence are also key, ensuring the link isn't due to chance or a third factor, requiring evidence that X causes Y, not the other way around, and that a plausible pathway exists.
What are the 4 types of causal relationships?
There are several ways to categorize causal relationships, but common frameworks identify four main types: Causal Chains (A -> B -> C), Causal Homeostasis/Cycles (A -> B -> C -> A), Common-Cause (A -> B & C), and Common-Effect (A & B -> C). Other systems focus on sufficiency and necessity (necessary & sufficient, sufficient but not necessary, etc.) or different levels of complexity like nomothetic (general laws) vs. idiographic (specific instances).
What are the five theories of disease causation?
- Theories of disease causation:
- Miasma theory.
- Germ theory.
- Epidemiological triangle.
- Web of causation.
- The theory of general susceptibility.
- The socio-environmental approach.
What are the 5 D's of epidemiology?
The "5 Ds of Epidemiology" refer to key health outcomes studied: Death, Disease, Disability, Discomfort, and Dissatisfaction, helping epidemiologists assess the full spectrum of health impacts beyond just illness. These concepts, alongside the classic "5 Ws" (Who, What, When, Where, Why/How), guide the investigation of health patterns in populations to understand causes and control health problems effectively.
What are the three criteria for causation?
A key goal of research is identifying causal relationships, showing how an independent variable (cause) affects the dependent variable (effect). The three criteria for cause and effect—association, time ordering, and non-spuriousness—are familiar to most researchers.
What are some examples of causation?
Causation examples show one event directly leading to another, like smoking causing lung cancer, working more hours resulting in a bigger paycheck, or a bee sting causing arm swelling. They demonstrate a clear cause-and-effect, distinguishing from mere correlation where events happen together but one doesn't necessarily cause the other, such as ice cream sales and shark attacks both increasing in summer due to heat.
What are common mistakes in determining causation?
Best practices for critical thinking in causal analysis
To keep yourself from falling into the trap of faulty causation, it's important to watch out for common logical fallacies. One big one is the false cause fallacy, where we mistakenly assume a causal link between two events just because they happen together.
What are the 4 criteria for causality?
To establish causality, researchers often use criteria like Bradford Hill's, focusing on Temporality (cause before effect), Consistency (repeated findings), Strength (strong association), and Plausibility/Mechanism (a believable explanation), though other criteria like Dose-Response, Specificity, and Coherence are also key, ensuring the link isn't due to chance or a third factor, requiring evidence that X causes Y, not the other way around, and that a plausible pathway exists.
Are the Bradford Hill criteria still relevant?
The Bradford Hill Criteria remain one of the most cited concepts in health research and are still upheld as valid tools for aiding causal inference [61].
What is Hill's causation theory?
Hill's argument is essentially that strong associations are more likely to be causal than weak associations because, if they could be explained by some other factor, the effect of that factor would have to be even stronger than the observed association and there- fore would have become evident (see Cornfield's ...
What are the basic principles of causation?
Cornell Law School defines causation as a legal principle that establishes a direct link between one person's actions and the resulting harm they cause to another person. Causation is a critical component for establishing liability. Causation further consists of cause in fact and proximate cause.
What is the only way to prove causation?
In many scientific disciplines, causality must be demonstrated by an experiment. In clinical medical research, this purpose is achieved with a randomized controlled trial (RCT) (4).
What is causation in simple terms?
Causation is the relationship where one event, action, or factor (the cause) produces a result or outcome (the effect); it's the act of something making something else happen, like a match strike causing a flame or a negligent action causing an injury, often distinguished from mere correlation (two things happening together) by proving a direct link.