Epidemiology and Applied Statistics

 

Students will learn about the concepts, principles, and methods in epidemiology. The participants will familiarize themselves with study designs, methodological problems, statistical analyses and causal inference. The skills learned in this course are of importance when conducting research as well as when evaluating published research.

In the first week the student will become acquainted with the field of epidemiology and gain knowledge on research designs, measures of frequency and association. By the end of the week a research question is formulated, for which data have to be analyzed during the course. Further, a start is made with the applied statistics.

In the second week the student will familiarize themselves with the concepts of validity and precision, bias, confounding and effect modification. The student will gain knowledge about correlations, univariate and multiple regression analyses, and their applications in SPSS. The final statistical analyses are performed (including interaction and stratification). Students will give an oral presentation of 10 minutes on their research question (analyses, results, conclusion, discussion), followed by a general discussion.

Topics include:
• Study population
• Study designs (cross-sectional/ longitudinal, descriptive/ experimental, case-control/ cohort/ intervention
• How to formulate a research question and to make it operational
• Measures of frequency: prevalence/ incidence, risk difference, population attributable risk
• Measures of effect: relative risk (RR), odds ratio (OR)
• Methodological problems: precision/ validity, selection bias/ information bias/ confounding
• Possible ways to deal with confounding in the study design (matching, randomization)
• Causality
• Descriptive statistics (plots, distribution, group differences)
• Association (correlation, regression)
• How to deal with confounding in the analysis (stratification, interaction and effect modification)
• Deriving inferences (statistical significance, clinical relevance, trend) 

Study load

3 ECTS credit points

 

Calendar

November ? - ?, 2012 (09:00-13:00 hrs)

 

Registration

Ms. M.H. (Maaike) Bansema (m.h.bansema@umcg.nl)

Phone: +31 50 363 8409

 

Coordinator

prof. H.M. (Marike) Boezen

 

Additional information

 -