Book excerpt: This new edition attempts to provide a broad picture of cardiovascular disease epidemiology including survey methods, experimental methods, and new methods appropriate for use in developed and developing countries. It also goes beyond practical guidelines to provide detailed methods useful in the field for data collection, editing, analysis, and interpretation. The book is not only a manual of operations for surveys but provides, as well, the conceptual background and literature base for the research approaches and procedures that it proposes. A complete source and critical reference for the many and varied health care professionals and support personnel involved in cardiovascular research in evaluation of health care effects and costs in hospital, and population surveillance of trends, and in treatment and prevention trials of new agents instruments and procedures. A compendium of methods and forms on a computer disk is included.