Category: S

Moral behavior selected by a person as opposed to socially imposed moral and ethical codes or standards.  

In epidemiology, the result of differences between those who die and those who live. Those who survive can have characteristics related to maintaining life that confound retrospective studies of health conditions causing mortality.  

Minimizing the number of one’s different sexual partners.  

A health-screening procedure conducted on persons who are at high risk for contracting a specific health condition.  

A possible confounding factor in longitudinal research in which less healthy people in a sample are more likely to dropout.  

Trial and error learning in which the- subjects learn to select the correct response from among many possible responses.  

A way of obtaining information in which a person attends to data that support his or her choice or preference and overlooks data to the contrary.  

The method of study of genetic factors in which subjects with specific characteristics are mated together for the purposes of studying the transmission of these characteristics to the offspring.  

The tendency to overemphasize one detail out of context and ignore other important features of a situation.  

The effectiveness of the environment in changing the frequency of alleles in a population. Any change in the environment that encourages particular mutations to succeed. For example, antibiotic use kills susceptible bacteria and allows microorganisms with resistant genes to survive and proliferate.