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University of Cape Town

Understanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics

University of Cape Town via Coursera

Overview

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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.

Syllabus

  • Getting things started by defining study types
    • Welcome to the first week. Here we’ll provide an intuitive understanding of clinical research results. So this isn’t a comprehensive statistics course - rather it offers a practical orientation to the field of medical research and commonly used statistical analysis. The first topics we will look at are research methods and data collection with a specific focus on study types. By the end, you should be able to identify which study types are being used and why the researchers selected them, when you are later reading a published paper.
  • Describing your data
    • 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, Mann-Whitney-U test, Wilcoxon test, Fisher’s exact test, and the ubiquitous chi-squared test. Why so many tests you might wonder? It’s all about types of data. This week I am going to tackle the differences in data that determine what type of statistical test we can use in making sense of our data.
  • 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 less that 0.05, we accept this a proof that some significant difference was found, at least statistically.In reality things are a bit more complicated than that. The literature is currently full of questions about the ubiquitous p-vale and why it is not the panacea many of us have used it as. During this week you will develop an intuitive understanding of concept of a p-value. From there, I'll move on to the heart of probability theory, the Central Limit Theorem and data distribution.
  • The important first steps: Hypothesis testing and confidence levels
    • In general, a researcher has a question in mind that he or she needs to answer. Everyone might have an opinion on this question (or answer), but a researcher looks for the answer by designing an experiment and investigating the outcome. First, we will look at hypotheses and how they relate to ethical and unbiased research and reporting. We'll also tackle confidence intervals which I believe are one of the least understood and often misrepresented values in healthcare research. The most common tests used in the literature to compare numerical data point values are t-tests, analysis of variance, and linear regression. In the last lesson we take a closer look at these tests, but perhaps more importantly, their strict assumptions.
  • 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 that the name Student was actually a pseudonym, used by William Gosset (1876 - 1937). Parametric tests have very strict assumptions that must be met before their use is justified. In this lesson we take a closer look at these tests, but perhaps more importantly, their strict assumptions. Once you know these, you will be able to identify when these tests are used inappropriately.
  • 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 positive and negative results. We’ll decipher sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values. You'll end of this course with a final exam, to test the knowledge and application you've learned in this course. I hope you've enjoyed this course and it helps your understanding of clinical research.

Taught by

Dr Juan H Klopper

Reviews

4.8 rating, based on 795 Class Central reviews

4.8 rating at Coursera based on 3303 ratings

Start your review of Understanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics

  • Anonymous
    This course is very educative especially for people in the medical field. I have learned alot about clinical research and how to look at different papers that have been published.
    The information shared here is very important for anyone interested in doing any form of research. How to decide on the method and statistical analysis has been very well covered here.

    THANK YOU.
  • Overall good, but the course lacks practical examples like demos. E.g how to create dummy data for t-distribution using spread sheet software. Require more examples on nonparametric tests. I feel nonparametric tests are not explained properly. For example, rank sum doesn't make complete sense The course does not explain shortcomings of p value in larger samples. Lastly, there is no explanation on logistic regression that would have made this course complete. This course is nice overview for someone who wants to have basic understanding of clinical research.
  • good way to start with clinical statistic life. The course could help your life easier and change your attitude about research.
  • What a great course! I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in clinical research and wants to understand how statistics is used in clinical research. I loved all aspects of the course. The lecture videos were short and crisp. Dr. Klopper is very engaging and explained even the hardest concepts really well. The quizzes let you apply what you learn. The peer review assignments are a great way of soliciting and giving feedback. Learning this course has really enriched my statistics knowledge.
  • Anonymous
    I take this course to learn basic research literature and basic statistics. I found it very useful and interesting. Lecture videos are good , simple and in understanding language.They try to start from basics and then take it to higher level . And in very short time cover each and every topic very reasonably. Example’s that have been used make it easy to understand the concept. After that key notes are also precise and accurate. Test after completion of topic to test your knowledge is very important part to know about your progress in the course. And the most important and good thing u can complete it according to ur own pace.Overall good experience and feeling confident after doing this course. Thank u so much .
  • Stefka Behova
    I really enjoyed this course. It is very well organised with clear objectives and a level of simplicity allowing a beginner to understand and acquire a very grasp on the subject. The information is presented in short easy to digest sections with reg…
  • Anonymous
    This was a fantastic and insightful course. The instructor delivered the lectures with some great practical examples. The course notes were very helpful and quizzes really tested the knowledge we had gained during the course. Although, I have worked with statistics before this course was a good choice for me as I gained more clarity and confidence on the concepts. I will recommend taking this course, it is worth the time and effort. Thank you Coursera, University of Cape Town and to the instructor for the time and efforts.
  • Profile image for Emmanuel Polito
    Emmanuel Polito
    Undertanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics es un curso que te dará todas las bases sobre cómo comenzar a entender la investigación clínica y sore todo a como aplicar el uso de la estadística de una forma correcta al momento de realizar un trabajjo de investigación propio. Estoy muy satisfecho con este curso ya que pude comprender desde lo más básico para ahora saber que pruebas estadísticas puedo o no utilizar en mis futuras investigaciones clínicas, lo recomiendo ampliamente. Gracias
  • Profile image for Arnab Dasgupta
    Arnab Dasgupta
    I have attempted taking courses or reading books on medical statistics earlier, and every time, I took a few baby steps and then aborted. I was good at maths in school, but hey, twenty years in the medical profession, and the confidence sags. This time, I got a bird's eye view of the entire subject, with sufficient detail where required. This course is comprehensive, without being intimidating, and focuses on an intuitive grasp of the subject. I can say for sure that I am more motivated now than ever before, in conducting clinical research the right way. The foundation stones have been laid. I can now build on this knowledge, without fear of statistics getting in the way.
  • Anonymous
    Dr Juan Koppler and his team has developed this course very efficiently and it has made me understand alot of aspects of statistics in research which i did not know previously and they were always a hindrance in my path to clinical research. But this course makes using statistics interesting and the passion with which Dr Juan is teaching makes it even more commendable. I am thankful to him and his team for developing this course and imparting valuable knowledge in a very accessible way.
  • Anonymous
    Absolutely fascinating. Lacked this concepts, despite having graduated from Medical School recently. It is completely necessary to get in touch with all this, research in the medical field is fundamental. Dr Klopper´s explanations are crystal clear.
  • Anonymous
    Easy to understand course, really provides easy and useful examples, as well as activities and examples to understand better the concepts. I would highly recommend this course for med students or any health care career, doesn’t matter how advanced in their career, this course will provide enough concepts and examples for everyone to be able to understand, even in the lack of complete knowledge of clinical rotations or diseases. It’s easy enough for you to be intuitive about it
  • Anonymous
    For a medical practitioner, research and statistics is not easy to understand. I had come across the same difficulty but after completing this course, It feels like statistics is not difficult to understand. Dr. Juan and their team come up with a great series of lectures that make you clear about the basics of medical and clinical research. After this course, you would be easily able to conduct your own research without any supervision and assistance from any other department.
  • Mohamaad
    I would like to thank every one who worked on this course to make such a good course in understanding the clinical research and the statistical analysis. the language was easy as I am an Arabic man and English is not my first language but I did not find any difficulty in understanding and solving the exams. to sum up this is one of the most useful courses to take if you are a beginner in this field.
  • Profile image for Anya Okorie Chinedum
    Anya Okorie Chinedum
    I have always wanted basic training in statistical analysis to kick-start my research career. Understanding Clinical Research: Behind the Statistics Course was the perfect stepping stone for this. It provided the much-desired knowledge I was looking for and has also granted me the confidence to kickstart my research career. It is definitely a wonderful course. Kudos to Dr. Juan and the team.
  • Anonymous
    Very informative, beautifully designed and well stractured course with short to the point lectures and reading material and with assignements and quizes that really test the understing of the subjects. Highly recommended for anyone that wants to get an inside the statistics in clinical research without bothering too much with the mathematical analysis behind it. Thank you Dr.Juan!
  • Anonymous
    This course is awesome and I enjoyed it very much. For the content of this course the fees is very much affordable. I have learnt a lot regarding clinical research and this has made me even more confident in reading articles and interpreting research data. Besides, i can have more confidence to carry out my own research as well with the knowledge i have gained in this study.
  • Anonymous
    I am so happy I took this online course. After years in which statistics seemed to be complete, finally a course in which the student is calmly and slowly brought step by step to an intuitive understanding of the basic concepts.
    Without too much mathematics you receive a perfect introduction to statistics and learn to read a scientific text. Compliments!!!
  • Anonymous
    It was an extremely interesting and fun course. Everything was explained very well and the assignments were great as well. The questions asked in the assignments were not too difficult and everything was based on what was taught. I especially enjoyed the case studies as they gave us a deeper insight into the statistics and tests used in research.
  • MOHD AMIR
    It's a wonderful and learning course for those who wants to learn more about clinical research with statistics involved in it .You can learn and grasp a knowledge and other clinical aspects related to clinical research so that you can do wonders in the field of clinical research for the betterment of society and health integrity.

    Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    This course enacted in me a a great interest for Clinical research and biostatistics.
    I cannot consider myself as an expert in biostatistics at the end of this course but the knowledge I gained will serve as a good foundation for other statistics courses and research projects.
    Thanks to Professor Koppler and Coursera for this wonderful course

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