To show the organization of the course that includes this module, follow this link:  Course organization

Learning outcomes

The course is aimed at enabling the student to:
- estimate accuracy and precision of measurements performed in the biomedical field;
- properly synthetize and summarize the information collected on a series of patients;
- compute the probability of a single event or several events
- understand how to generalize findings from samples to the original population
- critically appraise scientific literature dealing with Nursing, and understand and correctly implement guidelines.

Program

INTRODUCTION: The role of Statistics in Health Professions.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS: Different measurement scales – Statistical variables and their presentation through frequency distributions: one-entry or double-entry tables – Measures of central tendency: mean (arithmetic, geometric, weighted), median, mode, percentiles – Measures of dispersion: range, interquartile range, sum of squares, variance (mean square), standard deviation, variation coefficient.
PROBABILITY: Classic, frequentist, subjective interpretations of probability – Sum and product rules of probability – Independent and dependent events and conditional probability – Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of a diagnostic test – ROC curves – Bayes theorem and its application to differential diagnosis – Random variables – Theoretical probability distributions: normal distribution.
SAMPLING: Populations and samples - Common sampling designs – Sampling distribution of an estimator (sample mean).
STATISTICAL INFERENCE: Point and interval estimates: confidence interval – Logical structure of hypothesis testing: null and alternative hypotheses; acceptance and rejection regions; type I and type II error; power of a statistical test – Choice of statistical test.
EPIDEMIOLOGY: Measures of disease frequency: prevalence, incidence – Measures of association: risk difference, relative risk, odds ratio – Study design: cross-sectional, cohort and case-control studies.

Examination Methods

The written examination will consist of about 25 multiple choice questions with 5-8 possible answers, and one exercise of Statistical Inference on a simple data set. Some statistical questions will deal with an article.