Students will prepare a term paper and give a seminar on a selected topic. The major components of research activities are covered, including concept of health, formulation of research questions, literature reviews, study designs, selection of study populations, choice of measuring instruments, and study interpretation issues such as determination of causality and the effectiveness of clinical and community interventions. This special topics course will present leading edge thinking regarding controversies in health, health care, and population health research. This is a second course in statistical methods, concentrating primarily on regression models of various types. Topics covered include variously the main techniques of simple and multiple linear regression, and techniques such as the use of dummy variables, covariance adjustment, residual analysis, assessment of model fit, and related analysis of variance problems.
Some time is devoted to logistic regression, appropriate for binary outcome variables.
Extensions to survival data modelling may be covered, although the time available for this topic is usually limited. Principles of subjective assessment in topic areas ranging from educational evaluation to patient-based measurement of health attitudes or health status. Discussion includes principles and methods of constructing rating scales, and approaches to assessing the measurement properties of such scales. Advanced topics in generalizability theory will be introduced. Format is that of a small group, problem-based learning.