This is an introductory course on health research methods and biostatistics that will provide learners an understanding of different study designs and statistical tests that are used for addressing research questions in the medical field. This course is part of the Clinical Research Certificate Program.

Topics covered include:

• Research question, objective and hypothesis
• Observational vs experimental research
• Qualitative and quantitative study designs
• Epidemiology concepts and terms
• Clinical research study protocol
• Ethical Research
• Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics
• Variables and types of data
• Statistical functions in Excel
• Hypothesis testing and confidence intervals
• Sample size calculations and power

The first half of the course will be based on categorizing research studies, designing a study, experimental design, measuring and analyzing data, and ethical research conduct. The course covers fundamental concepts in epidemiology such as bias, confounding and common epidemiology indicators.

The second half of the course is intended for learners with minimal or no experience in biostatistical methods. For those who have taken a previous statistics course in their undergraduate education, this course will review basic concepts in statistics such as descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, p-values, sample size and statistical power. Learners will have the opportunity to learn how to conduct simple analysis in Microsoft Excel.

Upon successful completion of the course, learners will be able to:

• Research Methods
  • Explain the characteristics of a research question, objective and hypothesis
  • Explain the differences between observational versus experimental research studies
  • Understand the difference between a qualitative and quantitative study
  • Understand the terminology and features of different research study designs (case reports, case-control, cohort, and randomized clinical trial), and understand the strengths and weaknesses of these study designs, with respect to strength of evidence
  • Develop a basic understanding of epidemiology concepts and terms
  • Outline the types of design characteristics that needs to be established for a clinical research study protocol
  • Understanding the standards of ethical research
• Biostatistics
  • Understand the purpose and difference between descriptive statistics and inferential statistics
  • Identify the definition of variable and types of data
  • Analyze simple datasets using basic statistical functions in Microsoft Excel
  • Learn about the difference between hypothesis testing and confidence