Set out by Austin Bradford Hill (The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?, 1965).
Weighs an observed link between an exposure and an outcome against nine tests, from strength and consistency to timing and dose response, to judge whether it is causal.
When to reach for it
When a correlation in the data looks like a cause but no experiment can settle it, and acting on a false cause would be costly.
How it runs
- State the association between exposure and outcome.
- Check its strength, its consistency across settings, and its specificity.
- Confirm the exposure came before the outcome.
- Look for a dose response and a plausible mechanism.
- Check coherence, experimental evidence, and analogies.
- Judge the overall weight; only timing is required.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1965