27 Sep 21. Online learning: Statistics

Our online Statistics (STAT) course teaches statistics basics for imaging research datasets, including assessment of diagnostic test accuracy, inter-observer reliability, & repeated measures.

We also cover design, conduct & analysis of systematic reviews of imaging studies.

You can download our syllabus, which includes all the learning objectives for each module & lecture, here:

 

We offer multiple options for studying Statistics:

• As a stand-alone course, gaining university credits:

  • Starts in September / Autumn / Semester 1
  • 10 university credits
• As a stand-alone course, without university credits for CPD / CME preparation & FRCR part 1 training:
  • Starts anytime
• Embedded in one of our online degree programmes:
  • Neuroimaging for Research MSc / Dip / Cert
  • Imaging MSc / Dip / Cert

 

We asked Dr Francesca Chappell, senior medical statistician & main tutor for the Statistics course, to describe the course in more detail:

• Who is the STAT course aimed at?

  • This is an unusual statistics course! Even if people have done statistics courses before, they are unlikely to have covered the same material as this one, as it is about the statistics & methodology of diagnostic studies. We start right from square one as most people are complete beginners in this particular field of statistics. Of course, imaging & diagnosis go hand in hand.

 

• What can you learn in the STAT course?

  • We cover all the basics that allow someone to understand how well a diagnostic test works & what its limitations might be. There are a few calculations, but nothing beyond school-level maths. A really useful part, whether or not you ever intend to do any analyses in your career, is learning how to do critical appraisal of a paper – to be able to pinpoint what the biases in a study might be & how they could affect the estimates of diagnostic accuracy. If you read medical literature on how well imaging works at detecting disease, then critical appraisal is invaluable.

 

• What benefits can you get from our online study options?

  • The course is set up so that students can choose when they work & fit it in around the rest of their commitments. The online assessments mean that students get to work together & are generally very supportive of one another. The assessments are practical, allowing the students to implement their knowledge from the lectures, & they are geared to helping the students conduct research. There is also access to me, the statistics tutor, & I’m very happy to discuss the materials in the lectures or add explanations where more are needed.

 

• What outcomes / what can you expect at the end of the STAT course?

  • You’ll know when the methodology of a diagnostic study is good or a source of bias. You’ll be able to use critical appraisal tools such as QUADAS 2. You’ll understand what sensitivity & specificity are & how to interpret them. You’ll know about positive & negative predictive values & how to calculate them using data from the study. You’ll be familiar with how agreement is assessed & use methods such as Bland-Altman & kappa. Lastly, you have a working knowledge of systematic reviews of diagnostic studies.

 

Find out more about our online short course in Statistics & how to apply, here.