Advanced Epidemiology MED5523

  • Academic Session: 2024-25
  • School: School of Health and Wellbeing
  • Credits: 20
  • Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
  • Typically Offered: Semester 2
  • Available to Visiting Students: Yes
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No

Short Description

This course in advanced epidemiology is designed to move beyond the basics of epidemiology, building on the material taught in the introduction to epidemiology course (or similar). The course will cover the major contemporary issues in epidemiology, including counterfactual approaches, directed acyclic graphs and providing a conceptual understanding of the major threats to the validity of epidemiological studies. Students will gain an appreciation of the issues which typically come-up when epidemiological papers are criticised in peer review, or in the scientific literature.

Timetable

Weekly sessions comprised of lectures, seminars, and asynchronous material.

Requirements of Entry

None

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

Assessment 1 - Written Exercise [40%; ILO 1, 2, 4]

Assessment 1 - Written Exercise [60%; ILO 1-4]

Course Aims

This course will introduce students to advanced epidemiological concepts and methods, that are underpinned by counterfactual thinking, which are employed in modern epidemiological research.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Critique epidemiological research drawing on an understanding of counterfactual thinking and causal diagrams.

2. Recognise important biases and their implications, understand how such biases can be addressed by study design and/or statistical analysis.

3. Design epidemiological research which is informed by an understanding of counterfactual thinking and be able to critically reflect on the relative strengths and limitations of different methodological approaches.

4. Critically understand how quantitative methods can be used to apply effect measures to target populations, as well as the assumptions such approaches require.

5. Critically understand the major methodological issues in natural experiment studies, administrative data analyses and life-course epidemiology and relate these to major theories across the wider field (e.g., collider bias, confounding etc).

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.