About this course: If you’ve ever skipped over`the results section of a medical paper because terms like “confidence interval” or “p-value” go over your head, then you’re in the right place. You may be a clinical practitioner reading research articles to keep up-to-date with developments in your field or a medical student wondering how to approach your own research. Greater confidence in understanding statistical analysis and the results can benefit both working professionals and those undertaking research themselves. If you are simply interested in properly understanding the published literature or if you are embarking on conducting your own research, this course is your first step. It offers an easy entry into interpreting common statistical concepts without getting into nitty-gritty mathematical formulae. To be able to interpret and understand these concepts is the best way to start your journey into the world of clinical literature. That’s where this course comes in - so let’s get started! The course is free to enroll and take. You will be offered the option of purchasing a certificate of completion which you become eligible for, if you successfully complete the course requirements. This can be an excellent way of staying motivated! Financial Aid is also available.
Created by: University of Cape Town
Taught by: Juan H Klopper, Dr
Department of Surgery
| Commitment | 6 weeks of study, 2-3 hours/week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Getting things started by defining study types
Welcome to the first week of this course. We’ll be tackling five broad topics to provide you with an intuitive understanding of clinical research results. This isn’t a comprehensive statistics course, but it offers a practical orientation to the field of medic...
11 videos, 11 readings, 1 practice quiz
Graded: Week 1: Navigating Clinical Research
WEEK 2
Describing your data
With the next topics, we finally get started with the statistics. Have you ever looked at the methods and results section of any healthcare research publication and noted the variety of statistical tests used? You would have come across terms like t-test, Man...
15 videos, 12 readings, 3 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 2 Graded Quiz
WEEK 3
Building an intuitive understanding of statistical analysis
There is hardly any healthcare professional who is unfamiliar with the p-value. It is usually understood to have a watershed value of 0.05. If a research question is evaluated through the collection of data points and statistical analysis reveals a value les...
14 videos, 12 readings, 3 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 3 Graded Quiz
WEEK 4
The important first steps: Hypothesis testing and confidence levels
In general, a researcher has a question in mind that he or she needs an answer to. Everyone might have an opinion on the question (or answer), but an investigator looks for the answer by designing an experiment and investigating the outcome. In the first less...
8 videos, 6 readings, 2 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 4 Peer review
WEEK 5
Which test should you use?
The most common statistical test that you might come across in the literature is the t-test. There are, in actual fact, a few t-tests, but the one most are familiar with, is of course, Student’s t-test and its ubiquitous p-value. Not everyone, though, knows ...
15 videos, 6 readings, 2 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 5 Graded Quiz
WEEK 6
Categorical data and analyzing accuracy of results
Congratulations! You've reached the final week of the course Understanding Clinical Research. In this lesson we will take a look at how good tests are at picking up the presence or absence of disease, helping us choose appropriate tests, and how to interpret p...
8 videos, 4 readings, 2 practice quizzes
Graded: Week 6 Final examination
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Creators
University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town is the oldest university in South Africa and is one of the leading research universities on the African continent. UCT has over 25 000 students, of whom 30% are postgraduate students. We offer degrees in six faculties: Commerce, Engineering & the Built Environment, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law, and Science. We pride ourself on our diverse student body, which reflects the many cultures and backgrounds of the region. We welcome international students and are currently home to thousands of international students from over 100 countries. UCT has a tradition of academic excellence that is respected world-wide and is privileged to have more than 30 A-rated researchers on our staff, all of whom are recognised as world leaders in their field. Our aim is to ensure that our research contributes to the public good through sharing knowledge for the benefit of society. Past students include five Nobel Laureates – Max Theiler, Alan Cormack, Sir Aaron Klug, Ralph Bunche and, most recently, J M Coetzee.
Ratings and Reviews
Wonderful, easy, basic course to start with.
It was very good, simple and easy to understand. I thank Dr. Juan Klopper for making it easy without compromising the importance of the topic. Cheers !
This is an excellent course on the foundations of bio-statistics. Very intuitive understanding on statistical tests and their interpretation. Reading exercises and case studies are very good. I totally recommend it.
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SS
It was a very helpful course, now I know which method I will use in my clinical research and also how to read others.
Thank a lot