Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology (CBIC) Practice Exam 2025 – The All-in-One Guide for Exam Success

The term that defines the comparison of lung cancer incidence between smokers and nonsmokers is relative risk. Relative risk is a measure used in epidemiological studies to quantify the strength of the association between an exposure (in this case, smoking) and an outcome (such as lung cancer).

When comparing the incidence rates, relative risk indicates how much more or less likely smokers are to develop lung cancer compared to nonsmokers. A relative risk greater than 1 suggests that smokers have a higher incidence of lung cancer compared to nonsmokers, whereas a relative risk less than 1 would indicate a lower incidence in smokers. This makes relative risk a critical tool in understanding the impact of smoking on lung cancer rates.

Prevalence refers to the total number of cases of a disease in a population at a given time and does not provide information about the relationship between exposure and incidence. Attributable risk is focused on the amount of risk that can be attributed to a specific exposure, which, while related, is not the same as assessing the relative incidence between two groups. Odds ratio is a measure of association used predominantly in case-control studies, which estimates the odds of exposure among cases versus controls, not directly measuring incidence rates of lung cancer in smokers versus nonsmok