Does the term “p value” make you anxious? Do you have doubts about your understanding of the statistics in the research articles you read or work with? This confidence-building course will help you be more comfortable with statistical concepts as you read research findings and interpret data.
Through lecture, discussion, and examinations of library science research papers and interactive online exercises, you’ll gain an understanding of basic statistical concepts and be better able to interpret conclusions of research articles.
You’ll see how a research question rules the statistical analysis that should be used and be able to identify appropriate statistical tests to answer research questions. You’ll appreciate how the validity of statistical conclusions is dependent on the quality of the data, as much as on the analysis. And you’ll leave the course with greater confidence in your ability to understand statistics!
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Explain the meaning of basic statistical terms, such as standard deviation, t test, p value
- Describe the uses of basic statistical procedures
- Interpret statistics used in published research studies
- Interpret the data, formulas, and graphs in research articles
Audience:
Medical librarians and other health information professionals interested in developing the statistical know-how needed to interpret research findings.
Instructor:
Aparajita Sur is an Adjunct Professor at the University of St. Thomas who has taught undergraduate and graduate students Introductory Statistics and Data Analysis with R. She is completing her PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota (UMN) School of Public Health and is conducting research on missing data and Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials (SMARTs). Aparajita is an adept R user who has co-written a survival analysis R package and is a statistician on a diverse range of collaborative projects– from social work to health equity to electronic health vaccine promotion. She is passionate about making coding and statistics accessible and aims to reduce fear and increase excitement about the power of statistics. In 2019, she was awarded the UMN Biostatistics Outstanding Teacher Assistant award.
Registration Information
- Length: 1.5 hour recorded webinar
- Technical information: Go to MY Learning in MEDLIB-ED to access the webinar, resources, evaluation and certificate.
- Register, participate, and earn 1.5 MLA continuing education (CE) contact hours.
MLA CE Credits: 1.5
Course Includes
- 4 Lessons
- Course Certificate