(Cross Listed with MS 707)

STATISTICAL METHODS IN HEALTH RESEARCH

This course focuses on the main statistical issues that might be useful in health research. It will introduce statistical techniques in such a way that students will grasp the fundamentals to enable them to gain the confidence to perform their own analysis. It also provides sufficient instruction in areas such as clinical trials and epidemiology to enable them to critically appraise journal articles.

OBJECTIVES

This course will cover all basic statistical concepts and tests and include relevant examples for nurses, including case studies and data sets. Specific topics of the course are descriptive statistics, probability distributions, z-test and t-test for comparing the mean values of two continuous variables, one-way and two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc tests, correlation and simple linear regression, analysis of the frequency tables, and some non-parametric tests. Depending on time and the students’ progress and interests, multiple linear regression and logistic regression will be covered. Statistical package of SPSS will be used as the course software for analysis.

METHOD OF PRESENTATION (3 HRS/WEEK)

The course is designed to be presented in a lecture based format with a problem-based discussion component. Each week there will be a data analysis assignment for discussion to help students better understand and apply the concepts.