Use of Case Studies in a Graduate Course in Applied Regression

• Activity Number: 528
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Scott Emerson*+
• Companies: University of Washington

Abstract

The ultimate goal of teaching statistical methods to health scientists should be that the students learn an approach to the analysis of a dataset in order to answer a scientific question. I describe the use of a case study investigating reference ranges for somatosensory evoked potentials. I teach the approach to a data analysis while also emphasizing the general principles behind regression analysis (in particular) and statistical methods (in general). I illustrate the need to understand the scientific question, to translate it into a form that can be addressed by statistics, to find a suitable analytic approach, to perform descriptive and inferential analyses, and to interpret the results to answer the question. Additionally, the case study provides multiple opportunities to demonstrate more general statistical principles such as interactions and influential cases.