Incorporating Principles and Methods of Evidence-Based Practice Into Statistical Teaching

• Activity Number: 306
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Deborah V. Dawson*+ and David R. Drake
• Companies: University of Iowa and University of Iowa
• Keywords: evidence-based practice ; statistical education ; design ; literature review ; dentistry ; health sciences

Abstract

The principles and methods of evidence-based clinical practice assist physicians, dentists, and other health professionals in interpreting the scientific literature, and ultimately in applying relevant research findings to patient care. We illustrate the integration of evidence-based approaches into a year-long sequence in statistical methods and research design targeting dental residents, emphasizing critical appraisal of the literature. Components of this approach include instruction in meta-analysis, and use of a series of templates providing a framework for evaluation of research studies. The latter are used by students in assessing self-selected papers in areas such as therapy, diagnosis, etiology and prognosis. Similar approaches are used to construct guided evaluations of papers representing applications of modeling techniques such as logistic regression, multiple regression and survival analysis. Finally, review articles from journals of evidence-based practice are chosen to focus on specific statistical issues, such as multicollinearity. Examples of self-study materials and instructions developed for guided critique of the literature will be given.