VET380 Statistics and Epidemiology

About This Course

The content of the course is specifically aimed at the professional education in veterinary medicine. By learning to find, interpret, and critically appraise veterinary medical research literature, students gain the ability to acquire knowledge directly from the source, providing a solid foundation for lifelong learning.

Topics introduced in this course include: the research process, various concepts and objectives in epidemiology, measures of disease frequency and association, infectious disease epidemiology, study design and validity. Repeatability and diagnostic sensitivity and specificity for diagnostic tests. Descriptive statistics, categorical and numerical variables, expectation, and variance. Correlation and independence. Estimation, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing. One-way analysis of variance, linear regression, logistic regression and analysis of time-to-event data. The course focuses on understanding research literature, rather than making students proficient in statistical analysis.

KNOWLEDGE:

Students should be familiar with the research process and the fundamental principles of conducting research. They should be able to apply basic concepts and objectives in veterinary epidemiology and recognize the most common sources of error and bias in epidemiological and clinical studies. They should be able to describe various types and implications of study designs in veterinary scientific research.

Students will learn the basic ideas in statistics. They should become familiar with the assumptions for, and the use of, the most common statistical methods used to make inferences about general populations based on random samples from these populations.

SKILLS:

Students should be capable of critically evaluating veterinary scientific literature. This includes assessing the structure and content of an article, evaluating the validity of the results, and understanding how possible sources of error might affect these results. They should be able to interpret common figures and tables, and explain descriptive statistics and the results of statistical analyses. Furthermore, they should be able to communicate what has been done, the results, as well as the weaknesses and limitations of the analyses.

GENERAL COMPETENCE:

Students should be able to apply what they have learned to real life problems in the context of veterinary medicine. This involves an evidence-based approach to the veterinary field, meaning that students can address veterinary medical problems based on available evidence. This also means that students can make professional evaluations of the validity of research results or results presented through the media and assess how these results can be used.

EAEVE D1C:

The course, along with VET381 Literature Review, leads to the achievement of EAEVE's Day 1 Competency 1.9 and 1.11. The course also has learning outcomes that are important for Day 1 Competency 1.2, 1.10, and 1.14.

Detailed learning objectives can be found on Canvas.