Boonshoft School of Medicine

Analytical Resources

Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Mixed Methods and Research Design

The Boonshoft School of Medicine Strategic Plan includes the following Research Goal: “Advance the school's reputation for nationally recognized research.” The first Strategy for achieving this goal is to “Increase and advance our research portfolio.” One of the Planned Tactics for this Strategy is to “Increase faculty success in research grant processes.”

The Boonshoft School of Medicine Analytical Resources web page exists for the purpose of facilitating this tactic through “improving faculty skills in mixed methods research, epidemiology, and biostatistics.”

On this webpage, medical school researchers can find links to online tutorials and resources for analytical concepts and methods. This page exists to help faculty know what these areas are, why they are important, what the basic issues are and where to go for help.

Biostatistics

Biostatistics

“Biostatistics is the branch of statistics responsible for the proper interpretation of scientific data generated in the biology, public health and other health sciences (i.e., the biomedical sciences).  In these sciences, subjects (patients, mice, cells, etc.) exhibit considerable variation in their response to stimuli. This variation may be due to different treatments or it may be due to chance, measurement error, or other characteristics of the individual subjects.

“Biostatistics is particularly concerned with disentangling these different sources of variation. It seeks to distinguish between correlation and causation, and to make valid inferences from known samples about the populations from which they were drawn. (For example, do the results of treating patients with two therapies justify the conclusion that one treatment is better than the other?)”
(Source: Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics, accessed 11/12/14)

Topics

Online Resources

Wright State University Resources

Books

Statistical Software

Epidemiology

Epidemiology

“Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events (including disease), and the application of this study to the control of diseases and other health problems. Various methods can be used to carry out epidemiological investigations: surveillance and descriptive studies can be used to study distribution; analytical studies are used to study determinants.” (Source: World Health Organization, accessed 11/12/14)

Resources

  • CDC Principles of Epidemiology
    • Free self-study course
    • "Continuing education is available for certified public health educators, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, veterinarians, and public health professionals. CE is available only through the CDC/ATSDR Training and Continuing Education Online system at http://www.cdc.gov/TCEOnline/."
  • CDC Wonder
    • “Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research -- an easy-to-use, menu-driven system that makes the information resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) available to public health professionals and the public at large. It provides access to a wide array of public health information.”
  • Epiville
    • Case studies
  • World Health Organization
  • Supercourse
    • Lectures and PowerPoint presentations on many topics
  • STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Trials in Epidemiology) website
    • Similar to CONSORT, but for observations studies instead of clinical trials
  • Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists
    • Epidemiology workforce training catalog including numerous webinars and online training for epidemiology and statistic subjects
  • SEER
    • Statistics and epidemiology online self-paced tutorials
  • City MatCH
    • National maternal and child health organization
    • Training for PPOR (Perinatal Periods of Risk assessment)
  •  CDC case studies
    • “These case studies are interactive exercises developed to teach epidemiologic principles and practices. They are based on real-life outbreaks and public health problems and were developed in collaboration with the original investigators and experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The case studies require students to apply their epidemiologic knowledge and skills to problems confronted by public health practitioners at the local, state, and national level every day.”
  • HealthData.gov
    • A compilation of publicly available data
  • Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Books

Software

  • Much of the biostatistics software [LINK] can be used for epidemiology
  • CDC Epi Info
    • “Physicians, nurses, epidemiologists, and other public health workers lacking a background in information technology often have a need for simple tools that allow the rapid creation of data collection instruments and data analysis, visualization, and reporting using epidemiologic methods. Epi Info™, a suite of lightweight software tools, delivers core ad-hoc epidemiologic functionality without the complexity or expense of large, enterprise applications.”
  • Epidemiology Software Links: Software, tutorials, health statistics, datasets
  • OpenEpi
    • “OpenEpi is free and open source software for epidemiologic statistics. It can be run from a web server or downloaded and run without a web connection.”
    • Can run on a smartphone browser

Mixed Methods

Mixed Methods Research

Mixed methods research is “a research approach or methodology:

  • focusing on research questions that call for real-life contextual understandings, multi-level perspectives, and cultural influences;
  • employing rigorous quantitative research assessing magnitude and frequency of constructs and rigorous qualitative research exploring the meaning and understanding of constructs;
  • utilizing multiple methods (e.g., intervention trials and in-depth interviews);
  • intentionally integrating or combining these methods to draw on the strengths of each; and
  • framing the investigation within philosophical and theoretical positions.”

(Source: National Institutes of Health, accessed 11/12/14)

Resources

Software

  • Includes both qualitative and quantitative analyses
    • QDA Miner
      • Contains statistical (SimStat) and text analysis (WordStat) software packages
  • Qualitative data analysis
    • NVivo
      • For relatively small qualitative projects, NVivo is good (and cheaper than QDA); if you have more data and want easier integration with statistical method, QDA works better
    • Atlas.ti
    • Ethnograph
    • MAXQDA
    • QDAP
      • Free, open-source
  • Other software for analyzing data on cultural domains

Other Information

Grant Writing

Wright State University Contact Information for Research Needs

Acknowledgments

Last edited on 02/21/2018.

Office of Research Affairs

Paul J. Hershberger, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Research Affairs; Professor, Director of Research, Director of Division of Behavioral Health, Department of Family Medicine
Location: 
725 University Boulevard, 3rd Floor
Phone: 
937-245-7662
Email: 

research.affairs@wright.edu

Contact the Boonshoft School of Medicine

Location: 
3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy.
Dayton, OH 45435
Phone: 
(937) 775-2934
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