Within the framework of evidence-based practice, all healthcare professionals are expected to actively contribute to a range of activities, from the critical appraisal and application of the best available scientific evidence to the collection and analysis of clinical data arising from their professional practice and the sharing of these data with other healthcare professionals. All these activities require knowledge of medical statistics, which enables students to: - develop greater competence in evaluating and critically appraising the methodologies used in evidence published in the scientific literature; - understand the statistical strategies and tools used in scientific articles; - report clinical data (using tables and graphs) in order to share the evidence obtained with colleagues. By the end of the course, students should have acquired the fundamental knowledge and skills required to perform inferential statistical analyses and to correctly interpret the results of statistical analyses.
Course Prerequisites
Content of the Medical Statistics course (first year)
Teaching Methods
The course includes a theoretical component focusing on the main statistical tests, complemented by the presentation and discussion of practical examples. The fundamental features of the statistical software JASP will also be introduced, and the software will be used to perform statistical analyses on specific datasets.
Assessment Methods
Written examination consisting of multiple-choice theoretical questions and questions requiring the design of an inferential statistical analysis based on examples of physiotherapy research.
Texts
Martin Bland STATISTICA MEDICA, Apogeo, 2009
Contents
The topics covered will be as follows: Inferential statistics: hypothesis testing and statistical testing, The meaning of the p-value, types I and II errors, the power of a test, Examples of application of Student's t-test for comparison of two samples, Chi-squared test, simple linear regression model, How to report the results of statistical analysis in a scientific paper. Practical applications will be carried out using JASP.
Course Language
Italian
More information
The teacher meets students by appointment at the Dip.to Sanità Pubblica, Medicina Sperimentale e Forense, U.O. di Biostatistica e Epidemiologia Clinica, Via Forlanini 2, e-mail: cristina.montomoli@unipv.it
