Introductory description

This module runs in Term 2 and is available for students on a course where it is a listed option and as an Unusual Option to students who have completed the prerequisite modules.

Pre-requisite: ST346 Generalised linear models for Regression and Classification

Results from this module can be partly used to determine exemption eligibility in the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) modules CS1.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Study designs: cohort, case-control and survey designs; randomised clinical trials; adaptive clinical trial designs.
Analysis of censored survival data: Life tables; hazard and survival functions; Kaplan-Meier survival curves; parametric survival models, the proportional hazards regression model.
Systematic reviews and meta-analysis: Systematic reviews summarise evidence on particular medical topics; meta-analyses use statistical methods such as glms to summarise studies included in systematic reviews; publication bias and funnel plots; Cochrane reviews.
Infectious disease transmission models: Discrete vs continuous time models, final size distribution, fitting epidemic models to household data, links to survival analysis.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• understand how to use and interpret generalised linear models and survival analysis in medical data analysis
• appreciate the role of statistics in medical research
• understand some of the statistical principles of good practice in medical investigations

Indicative reading list

The books listed are suggestions. Some provide general background [1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 16]; others are more focussed on statistical methodology [4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15]. In many cases, there will be other editions, which you can easily find through the library. I requested multiple copies of the most popular books; the essential material is in the older as well as newer editions. In addition, some e-books are now available through the library.

[1] D.G. Altman. Practical Statistics for Medical Research. Chapman and Hall, London, 1991.
[2] P Armitage and G Berry. Statistical Methods in Medical Research. Blackwell, Oxford, 2 edition, 1987.
[3] M Bland. An introduction to medical statistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2 edition, 1995.
[4] M Borenstein. Introduction to meta-analysis. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, U.K., 2009.
[5] M J Campbell and D Machin. Medical statistics: a commonsense approach. Wiley, Chicester, 3 edition, 1999.
[6] D. Collett. Modelling binary data. Chapman & Hall, London, 1991. 0412387905.
[7] D. Collett. Modelling survival data in medical research. Chapman & Hall, London, 3 edition, 2014.
[8] D R Cox and D Oakes. Analysis of Survival Data. Chapman & Hall, London, 1984.
[9] D R Cox and E J Snell. Analysis of Binary data. Chapman & Hall, London, 2 edition, 1989.
[10] AJ Dobson and AG Barnett. An introduction to generalized linear models. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2008. 3rd ed.
[11] JV Freeman, SJ Walters, and MJ Campbell. How to display data. Blackwell (BMJ books), Oxford, 2008.
[12] S M Gore and D G Altman. Statistics in Practice. British Medical Association, London, 1982.
[13] M.K.B Parmar and D Machin. Survival analysis: a practical approach. Wiley, Chichester, 1995. 0471936405.
14] G Schwarzer, JR Carpenter, and G Rücker. Meta-analysis with R. Springer, Cham, 2015.
[15] AJ Sutton, KR Abrams, DR Jones, RA Sheldon, and F Sung. Methods for meta-analysis in medical research. Wiley, Chichester, 2000.
[16] E R Tufte. The Visual display of quantitative information. Graphics Press, Cheshire,
1983.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

Sourcing and summarizing medical research articles.
Novel secondary analysis of data.
Defining research questions and evaluating appropriate study designs.

Interdisciplinary

Students are required to study medical research articles, learn some medical terms, and translate the results of statistical analyses into summaries suitable for medical professionals and for the general public.

International

Students will be expected to review medical articles published by non-UK research groups.

Subject specific skills

-To understand the relevance of generalized linear models in analysis of medical data, and good practice in fitting and interpreting such models.
-To understand the analysis of survival data from medical studies, and good practice in fitting and interpreting such models.
-To appreciate the particular study the role of statistics in the design.

Transferable skills

Appreciation of the role of statistics in the design and analysis of studies addressing questions related to health and other aspects of society.
Competence in using descriptive statistics, generalized linear models and survival analysis to investigate and summarise data.