This course will teach core skills in quantitative methods, data analysis, data interpretation and experimental design for the design, evaluation and analysis of epidemiological studies.

This course will consist of workshop style sessions that include a mixture of lectures, tutorial and practical content.

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Summative assessments within the course consist of:

Data analysis & reporting assignment (25% of course grade, ILOs 3, 4 & 5)

Critique of an example study (including calculations and narrative response questions) (25% of course grade, ILOs 1, 2, 3 & 5).

Critique of multiple published articles ~ 2000 words (50% of course grade, ILOs 1,2,3 & 5).

The course aims to equip students with an understanding of core epidemiological terminology, concepts and principles such that they can understand and critically evaluate epidemiological studies in the literature. The course also aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills to appropriately design an epidemiological study and to conduct simple epidemiological calculations and analyses.

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

1. Understand and critically evaluate epidemiological study designs such that strengths and weaknesses of different study designs can be identified and critically discussed.

2. Critically appraise epidemiological studies in the published literature.

3. Calculate and report key epidemiological metrics.

4. Use appropriate statistical analyses and software to analyse data and create appropriate summaries/figures/tables to present results.

5. Understand core epidemiological terminology related to different types of data and appropriate study design so these terms can be applied appropriately in scientific communications.

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