A major change in state quarantine guidance this week is throwing a lot of Iowans off guard and leaving you with questions.
It's important to have context about how state leaders made the decision they say is based on a study they conducted in western Iowa.
There are three kinds of research-based studies out there. Local 5 talked to someone who does this for a living: Tim Welty with Drake University.
The prospective study
We design the study, we pose the questions, we say that these types of patients will be included, these types of patients will be exclued.
The retrospective study
So we need a quick answer so we decide we are going to try and answer the question by going backwards in time and look at data.
The systematic review
What we try to do is go look at smaller studies and pool data from those smaller studies.
Studies don't have to be published, in fact, many are never released to the public but are still used to make policy decisions.
"That's a problem because you could have a negative study or a positive study but that information isn't made available."
There are exceptions.
If you receive government funding, you can look up the study on ClinicalTrials.gov.
"I'm not certain that it would fall under what I would say a typical study is," Welty said. "What I believe they are calling a study is that they have gone back and looked at data that they have and analyzed that. And then made decisions based upon that data."
Local 5 has reached out to the governor's office and Iowa Department of Public Health for a copy of the data but have not received a response.