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Teaching
An important function of the CEB Unit is to provide a comprehensive range of courses in methods of quantitative research, including planning and conducting research and basic statistical analysis. None of the courses require prior knowledge of statistical methods, although Clinical Trials assumes prior knowledge or experience at the level of Getting Started in Clinical Research.
We have designed the core sequence of courses as a natural progression for researchers in clinical or public health areas, beginning with Getting Started in Clinical Research and proceeding to EpiData, Introduction to Biostatistics and the Stata courses. The Stata courses are run in conjunction with the School of Population Health at The University of Melbourne. The courses are very practically oriented, with much of the work done in small groups working on specific paediatric research topics, and are designed to equip new researchers with the basic tools needed to conduct a study. Courses are run frequently throughout the year. Participants receive a booklet of course notes.
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Laboratory Statistics: Understanding error bars and other basic statistics
Thursday 29th January 2009
Conference Rooms A & B, 10th floor, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
This session is designed specifically for laboratory researchers and will explain the fundamentals of measuring variation and statistical error using examples from typical experimental work.
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Getting Started in Clinical Research
Monday 2nd March - Friday 6th March 2009
Seminar Room 2, 4th floor, Front Entry Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
A short course designed to provide a concentrated introduction to quantitative methods in clinical research with an emphasis on concepts and practical issues rather than statistical details. No prior knowledge of statistical or epidemiological methods is necessary
Program:
Monday: Defining research questions
Planning a protocol, framing research questions, ethicsTuesday: Research planning
Types of study, populations and samples, study design, common sources of errorsWednesday: Research planning (continued)
Medical writingThursday: Measurement of outcomes
Individual and summary measurements and comparisonsFriday: Data collection/questionnaire design
Instrument design, coding, data entry
- Introduction to Biostatistics
Tuesday 28th April - Thursday 30th April & Tuesday 27th October - Thursday 29th October 2009
Seminar Room 2, 4th floor, Front Entry Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
This course provides researchers with a comprehensive introduction to the methods of statistical analysis most commonly used in clinical research,with emphasis on their correct interpretation.
Program:
Day 1: Descriptive statistics & sampling variability
Summaries & graphical displays; standard deviation, standard errorDay 2: Analysing continuous outcomes
Confidence intervals, hypothesis tests & P values, t-testDay 3: Analysing binary outcomes
Difference of proportions, odds ratio, chi-squared test
This course does not include training in statistical analysis using a computer package but provides an essential preparation to subsequent hands-on courses such as those that we provide in Stata (see below). It is strongly recommended that participants take the first workshop, Getting Started in Clinical Research, as a preliminary for this course.
** Please bring a calculator to this course.
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Sample Size Estimation
Thursday 28th May 2009
Seminar Room 2, 4th floor, Front Entry Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
This half-day workshop introduces participants to the basic principles involved in determining the number of participants to include in a quantitatively based research study. Emphasis is placed on the assumptions that the researcher needs to make in order to perform a sample size calculation, and on practical strategies for dealing with these assumptions. It is strongly recommended that you take our short course on Introduction to Biostatistics, or a similar introductory statistics course, prior to this workshop.
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Principles of Data Management
Wednesday 10th June 2009
Seminar Room 2, 4th floor, Front Entry Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
This course will cover the concepts of data management necessary to consider before starting data collection. It will focus on designing and maintaining a simple database, and address issues that you will need to consider for more complex databases.
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Laboratory Statistics 2: Understanding p values
Wednesday 8th July 2009
Conference Rooms A & B, 10th floor, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
This session follows on from Laboratory Statistics I. Using examples relevant to laboratory researchers, it will cover p values, t-tests, and the corresponding non-parametric statistical tests.
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Introduction to Clinical Trials
Tuesday 15th September - Wednesday 16th September 2009
Seminar Room 2, 4th floor, Front Entry Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
A one and a half-day course is a must for anyone planning to undertake a randomised controlled trial. It provides an introduction to the design and conduct of trials including tools required to develop a study protocol as well as an overview of the skills required to carry-out a trial from conception to dissemination.
Material covered includes an overview of clinical trial design and methodology; trial conduct; data collection and management; ethical considerations; pharmacy, and industry related issues; and how to analyse and present your results.
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Systematic Reviews
Seminar Room 2, 4th floor, Front Entry Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
Wednesday 11th November - Thursday 12th November 2009
This 2 half-days workshop introduces students to the principles involved in conducting a systematic review and includes discussion of the Cochrane collaboration and an introduction to methods of meta-analysis (the quantitative synthesis of findings from several studies.
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Introduction to Epidata
Friday 3th April, Friday 26th June and 17th July 2009
IT Training Room, 7th floor, South East Building, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville
A half-day course which provides hands-on training in the EpiData package, a comprehensive simple tool for documented data entry. The package is free and is an excellent tool for getting your data onto the computer. It can export files in suitable formats for statistical analysis. The course provides hands-on training in how to use EpiData to set up your data collection forms for data entry on the computer.
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Stata I: Examining and Describing Data
11th & 12th February: 10th & 11th March: 5th & 6th May: 2nd & 3rd June: 4th & 5th August: 6th & 7th October, 2009
Room 432, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, 207 Bouverie Street (cnr Banbridge Place near Grattan Street), Carlton
This course will be run over one and a half-days and covers the most commonly used Stata commands (Stata is now the statistical software recommended for most researchers at RCH). Participants will be shown how to enter and import data into Stata, inspect the data, produce descriptive statistics, change data and create new variables, create simple graphs, save results and data, and use Stata's extensive online help. Participants will learn techniques for organising their work efficiently in Stata.
Prerequisites
The course is designed for beginning researchers but it assumes familiarity with:
- computer file management within Microsoft Windows, e.g. how to recognise different file types by their extensions and how to move files between directories (NB although Stata is available for other platforms such as Macintosh, the courses are Windows based. - elementary statistics, e.g. at the level of CEBU's workshop (3 half-days) Introduction to Biostatistics.
This course is run in conjunction with the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne.
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Stata II: Data Management and Analysis
25th & 26th February: 24th & 25th March: 16th & 17th June: 18th & 19th August: 20th & 21st October, 2009
Room 432, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, 207 Bouverie Street (cnr Banbridge Place near Grattan Street), Carlton
This second Stata course will be run over one and a half-days and participants will learn how to clean data, combine data files, and carry out basic data analysis. The data analysis topics covered include: producing descriptive statistics, calculating confidence intervals, hypothesis testing (using chi square, t tests and nonparametric tests), and calculating odds ratios and relative risks.
Prerequisites
The course is a step up from the Stata I course. It is designed for people who have completed our Stata I course or feel confident using basic commands in Stata, and creating log-files and do-files. The focus of this course is on learning to apply Stata in statistical analysis rather than being a statistics course. Participants are therefore expected to have a basic knowledge of statistics, at least at the level of our Introduction to Biostatistics course.
This course is run in conjunction with the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne.
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Stata III: Advanced Tips & Tricks
7th April: 3rd September 2009
Room 432, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, 207 Bouverie Street (cnr Banbridge Place near Grattan Street), Carlton
This third Stata course will be run over one day and participants will learn how to use Stata efficiently for more extensive and repetitive tasks, while reducing the chance of data processing errors. Topics include conversion of non-numeric data to numeric form, reshaping repeated measures or clustered data between "wide" and "long" formats, using Stata's in-built variables to count across groups of observations, and familiarisation with extended methods for generating new variables from exitting data. Time-saving techniques covered include how to repeat the same command(s) for a number of variables or values (looping), and finding and downloading useful extensions to official Stata. Note that the course does not cover further techniques for statistical data analysis.
Prerequisites
This course is designed for people who have completed Stata I and Stata II and fell confident with the material contained in these courses. It will be most useful for those who use Stata frequently to perform data management or other repetitive tasks.
This course is run in conjunction with the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne.