Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Course Number: 140621
Credit hours: 3
Department: Public Health
Course Level: Second Year
Faculty: Medicine
Long Course Description
This course will introduce students to basic concepts in statistics and epidemiology and the analysis and presentation of public health data, using a non-mathematical approach.Sources of routine data and their interpretation will be discussed.
The course will include definition of epidemiological concepts and discussion of study design in epidemiology.
Students will be introduced to measures of population health, mortality and morbidity, especially those routinely derived from public health data and used in public health practice and health needs assessment.Related concepts such as prevalence and incidence will be included.
It will provide an introduction to the principles behind and the application to public health of commonly used statistical techniques.
The course will provide students with the basic tools needed to manage, analyze and interpret information and statistics.
Specific topics include: sampling; probability distributions; sampling distribution of the mean; confidence interval and significance tests for one-sample, two paired samples and two independent samples for continuous data and also binary data; correlation and simple linear regression; distribution-free methods for two paired samples, two independent samples and correlation; power and sample size estimation for simple studies; statistical aspects of study design and analysis.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Apply epidemiological principles to specific area of study within public health.
- Recognize and utilize appropriate epidemiological procedures according to study type.
- Critique and review the epidemiological literature.
- Identify the range of problems to which epidemiology can be applied in public health.
- Apply multivariate statistical methods to analyze epidemiological data.
- Use computer software packages to analyze epidemiologic data.
Learning activities (methods)
Epidemiology lecture, a biostatistics lecture
An epidemiology tutorial (where the concepts covered in the epidemiology lecture are applied)
A computing laboratory (where you will apply the methods and concepts covered in the biostatistics lecture and use the SPSS software package).
Course outlines and weekly schedule
Week 1:Introduction to Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Sampling and Data types
Practical 1: Introduction to Microsoft Excel and Data Entry
Week 2:Representations and Summary Measures for Continuous and Discrete
(Quantitative) Data
Practical 2: Formulas, Functions and Descriptive Statistics.
Week 3: Representations and Summary Measures for Categorical (Qualitative) Data;
Introduction to Bi-variate Representations
Practical 3: Tabulations and Graphical Summaries
Week 4: Normal Distribution
Practical 4: Normality Testing and Transformations
Week 5: Introduction to Statistical Inference & One-sample t-test
Practical 5: One-sample t tests
First exam 25%
Week 7: Paired Samples t-test and Two Samples t-test
Practical 7: Paired Samples t-test and Two Samples t-test
Week 8: Confidence Intervals; Statistical Inference Revisited
Practical 8: Confidence Intervals
Week 9: Scatter Plots and Correlations
Practical 9: Scatter Plots and Correlations
Week 10: Cross-tabulations and Chi-square Tests
Practical 10: Cross tabulations and Chi-square
Week 11: Epidemiological Measures and data sources
Practical 11: Epidemiological Measures & Review
Second exam 25%
Week 13: Epidemiological surveillance and outbreak investigations
Week 14: Sampling Methods, Clinical Trials, Causation, Bias and Confounding.
Week 15: Epidemiology application: Evaluating screening programs Sensitivity and specificity.
Final exam 50%
Course Assessment
- Exam In 25% of the Final Grade
- Exam II 25% of the Final Grade
- Exam III (Final Exam) 50% of the Final Grade
100% 0f the Final Grade
References
- Leon Gordis - Epidemiology 2nd Edition; (W.B. Saunders; 2000)
- Morton, Hebel and McCarter-A Study Guide to Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Aspen Pub.; 2001)
- Jekel James,F-Epidemiology, biostatistics, and preventive medicine,3rd edition,W.B. Saunders;2006.