Developing Online Resources to Teach Biostatistics to Working Medical Researchers

• Activity Number: 223
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Monday, August 10, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Brian Healy* and Amy Shui and Douglas Hayden
• Companies: Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital
• Keywords: Education ; Post-graduate ; On-line

Abstract

Although medical researchers are exposed to statistics during medical or graduate school, they are often insufficiently prepared to interpret the statistical content of the literature or make optimal decisions regarding study design and data analysis. At Massachusetts General Hospital Biostatistics Center and Harvard Clinical and Translation Science Center (Catalyst), we have developed on-line resources so working medical researchers can learn biostatistics at their own level, at their own pace and on their own schedule. These resources include recorded lectures, annotated output from statistical software, case studies, and references to other web resources. The three goals of our program are: (1) to provide researchers with a basic understanding of statistical concepts to allow them to choose an initial analysis plan, (2) to introduce statistical software packages so that they can perform basic data manipulations and analyses, and (3) to guide researchers about when they need to seek collaboration with a statistician. By having the resources linked together in one place, the researcher is able to navigate through the information in a logical manner leading to better decisions.