An Inventory of (Bio)statistics Courses at an Academic Health Science Center: Is Duplication Really Necessary?

• Activity Number: 575
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 6, 2009 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Adriana Perez*+ and Mourad Atlas and Carl A. Hornung
• Companies: The University of Texas at Houston Health Science Center and University of Louisville and University of Louisville
• Keywords: Biostatistics ; Quantitative Methods ; Teaching ; Duplication ; Health ; Core competencies

Abstract

The rapid growth of interdisciplinary and translational research requires re-thinking what we teach and how we present core competency material to pre and post-doctoral scientists from diverse disciplines. We conducted a comprehensive review of (bio)statistics and quantitative methods courses taught at the University of Louisville Health Science Center to identify courses that present the same material in different schools (i.e., Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Public Health). We identified 47 courses and obtained syllabi and CVs from faculty. The amount of time spent teaching summary statistics and variables, basic inference, probability, sampling, data management and research methods within the schools (non biostatistics degrees) is similar suggesting that significant duplication of effort exists. We report the hours of class time devoted to each topic by school.