Research Design and Biostatistics

Course Description

This course aims to improve the understanding of basic research methods and statistical concepts and principles and introduce some fundamental statistical tools, in the context of oral health research. The first part of this course covers basic assumptions and concepts of clinical and biomedical research, research methodologies, critical thinking, and evidence based dentistry. Residents will develop the skills needed to recognize the quality of the scientific evidence and the quality of various publications, the ability to conduct an evidence-based analysis of the literature, and the ability to present an evidence-based presentation on a controversial topic related to dentistry. The components of a research proposal and the basic elements of compliance will be discussed. The second part of the course covers concepts from statistics such as: summarizing, organizing, and presenting different types of sample data; simple probability; discrete and continuous probability distributions such as the Binomial and Normal distributions; the mean and variance of a probability distribution; sampling distributions; hypothesis testing; statistical significance; confidence intervals; non-parametric techniques; ANOVA; correlation and regression; categorical data analysis, tests for proportions, and Chi-Squared tests. Students will apply the techniques learned in class on a given data set, where they will analyze the data and perform statistical testing. The third part of the course students will discuss and evaluate the statistical methods used in relevant papers as well as in proposed students projects. 1 credit Grading S/U grading

Code

HDO 534

Credits

1

Subject

HDO