Analytical Resources

On this page:

Overview

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 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 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​​​​​

Books

Software

  • Much of the biostatistics software [LINK] can be used for epidemiology
  • 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 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