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This module aims to provide students with a basic understanding of the principles and methods underpinning statistical inference, with particular reference to the conduct of statistical analysis embedded in wider health economic evaluation (e.g. cost-effectiveness analysis). It is intended for students registered on the MSc Health Economics and Decision Science degree programme. For these students, the academic prerequisites for this module are satisfied via successful admission to their programme.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• understandÌýthe essentials of statistical modelling, with specific focus on practical aspects and problems relevant to health economic modelling;
• be ableÌýto make effective use of the R statistical software suite in order to visualize and analyse data typically encountered in modelling for health economic evaluation;
• understandÌýthe differences in the major approaches to statistical inference;
• understandÌýthe concepts underlying the philosophy and conduct of statistical analysis sufficient to follow other taught postgraduate level modules offered by the Department of Statistical Science in this application area;
• be able to deploy these concepts in a practical context, performing basic computer-assisted statistical analyses and interpreting the results.

Applications - This module will focus on applications in medicine, public health, epidemiology and health services research, although the same skills are readily transferrable to a variety of other fields and applications.

Indicative Content - Basics of statistical inference; commonly used distributional assumptions; probability calculus vs statistical inference; methods for point estimates (including basic concepts in Bayesian modelling and maximum likelihood estimation); interval estimates; principles of hypothesis and significance testing; design of trials; randomization; analysis of parallel group trials; introduction to survival analysis; Kaplan Meir estimator; log-rank test; proportional hazards model; sample size calculation.

Key Texts - Available from .