Amanda Burls School of Health Sciences City University of London, UK

Aims

To help users of health research understand and make sense of the results and statistics section of quantitative papers. It is NOT intended to teach people how to DO statistics but will focus instead on how to interpret them.

Participants require no prior knowledge or skills. The workshop will be fun and will use games and exercises to illustrate concepts. People who already understand statistics may also find it useful to attend the workshop to find out ways statistical concepts can be made accessible and unthreatening for lay people or health professionals who lack confidence in this area.

Program

The workshop will start with the very basic concepts such as Proportions, RR, OR, Risk difference, NNT, p-values, confidence intervals and clinical versus statistical significance. The concepts covered may progress to meta-analysis, heterogeneity and random and fixed effects models if time allows. The exact concepts covered will depend on the speed at which the group progresses and what participants want – we will focus on securely understanding each new concept before moving on to the next concept rather than rushing to cover lots of concepts superficially. 

No calculators are necessary, no questions are too stupid! Please bring a sense of humour and a coin.

If you have or have seen any great ways of teaching statistics that learners enjoy or find useful, please do come prepared to share these with the group, if you would like to.