Simulating Epidemiological Study Designs Using the Island

• Activity Number: 327
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Vittorio Addona*+
• Companies: Macalester College
• Keywords: epidemiology ; population simulator ; study design ; study protocol

Abstract

Epidemiology was introduced in 2009 at Macalester College. The course has no prerequisites and satisfies a quantitative thinking requirement. It is also a requirement for Macalester's Community and Global Health concentration (an interdepartmental minor). One portion of the course covers study design, e.g. case control, cohort, randomized controlled trials. The Island is a population simulator which allows the students to implement these study designs. We will discuss some nice consequences, such as the fact that students need to think carefully about devising effective study protocols for applying treatments and making measurements. In my experience, students become very engaged with the Island interface and their projects. They perform literature reviews to generate hypotheses, they spend a substantial amount of time gathering (and assembling) the data that they will analyze, they think about appropriate statistical techniques to employ (e.g. adjusted odds ratios/relative risks, linear/logistic regression), and they think critically about their results (e.g. why a negative result may not mean "no association", how they would alter their design if re-starting the project).