Key facts

Sorry, this course was heavily oversubscribed and cannot take any more students into this class. Please use the course enquiry form to be kept informed of future runs of this course or to join the waiting list.

Overview

This online statistics module is designed for busy health and social care professionals who need to understand the basics of health statistics without becoming statisticians. Students can study at the time of day and week that is best for them. Online discussion forums enable students to communicate with each other and with the tutor to analyse and understand real-life scenarios.

The module promotes an online learning community to support and motivate students during the 10-weeks.

Description

Who is it for?

This module is aimed at those working in health and social care who need to understand and interpret statistics in health care research. It will help you to critically read and understand research papers, journal articles and to prepare research proposals.

To take full benefit of this module you should be able to commit upto 10 hours per week for 10 weeks. Please be aware that participation in the online discussions is a requirement for successful completion of the module.

This module will cover:

This module is divided into 10 units. Each unit covers a different aspect of statistics and is designed to be studied in a week.

Each unit includes a range of activities and exercises that will enable students to understand statistics in health care research. Individual activities involve reading related text book chapters and articles, working through problems or analysing example datasets. Group activities involve online discussions and debates of important issues. Discussions occur weekly, but are "asynchronous" due to possible local time differences between the student's locations. Weekly study for each unit is self-paced using online resources. Movement through the units is structured week by week to enable students to complete sections at the same time as the rest of their group.

Programme details

Unit Content:

• Handling and describing data, learning to use your calculator
• Probability and random variables
• Exploratory data analysis
• Sampling distributions and statistical inference
• Hypothesis testing
• Analysis of variance
• Linear model and regression
• Statistics applied to cohort studies
• Statistics applied to case control studies
• Statistics applied to randomized controlled trials

Course aims

Benefits

On completion of the module students should:

• be able to understand and manipulate basic statistical techniques as preparation for modules in evidence-based health care
• understand the statistical issues in the planning and analysis of research
• understand the basic statistical aspects of published research

Assessment methods

The assessment will require the completion of a structured assignment. Students will be required to prepare short answers and to analyse and interpret data sets.

Oxford University Department for Continuing Education offers credit equivalent to Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS) points for the module. Participants successfully completing the assessment are eligible to earn credit equivalent to 20 M-level CATS points which may be counted towards a postgraduate qualification.

Recommended reading

Scholarships

Details of funding opportunities, including grants, bursaries, loans, scholarships and benefit information are available on our financial assistance page.

Fee options

Programme Fee

Stand-alone short course: £1790.00

For students enrolled on the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care: £1450.00

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Programmes including this module

This module can be studied as part of these programmes:

• MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care
• MSc in Experimental Therapeutics
• Postgraduate Diploma in Health Research
• Short courses in health sciences