Statistics in Clinical Trials for the Non-Statistician

Gain statistical knowledge and skills to advance clinical research

Whatever your role in clinical research, this online course from the University of Birmingham will build your statistical knowledge and skills directly applicable to clinical trials.

In just three weeks, you’ll gain the confidence to use what you’ve learned to enhance your enjoyment, engagement and participation within a trial team and improve the quality of future trials, better informing your clinical practice.

Summarise data generated in a clinical trial

You’ll begin by learning how to meaningfully summarise the vast amount of data collected in a trial and how to compare health outcomes across patients, to make formal comparisons between different treatments.

Draw meaningful inferences from trial findings

You’ll learn how statistical tests and models can assess whether any observed difference between two treatments is likely to be real or due to chance, and how confidence intervals enable us to draw more appropriate inferences about the magnitude of potential treatment effects.

Ensure precise and accurate results – even when things go wrong

You’ll learn how crucial sample size calculations are to guarantee precise estimates of treatment effect and how we ensure accurate findings when problems such as non-compliance to treatment and missing data occur.

Utilise appraisal skills to interpret published research and improve the reporting of future studies

Finally, you’ll learn how to recognise poor analyses or interpretation of results in published reports of trials, improving your critical appraisal skills and better informing your own future trials.

This course is ideal for individuals involved in clinical trials, whether in academia or the NHS, as well as those without a background in statistics. This includes aspiring chief investigators, research nurses, trial coordinators, trial managers, data managers, quality assurance team members, trial administrators, and other members of trial teams such as qualitative researchers or health economists.

The course is introductory with no prior knowledge or experience of statistics required.

Learners need no specific software, hardware or other resources to complete this course.

This course is ideal for individuals involved in clinical trials, whether in academia or the NHS, as well as those without a background in statistics. This includes aspiring chief investigators, research nurses, trial coordinators, trial managers, data managers, quality assurance team members, trial administrators, and other members of trial teams such as qualitative researchers or health economists.

The course is introductory with no prior knowledge or experience of statistics required.

• Identify the key statistical concepts and methods used within clinical trials and other studies conducted in healthcare research
• Summarise data of different data types
• Identify appropriate measures of treatment effect
• Interpret the findings of clinical trials published in the medical literature, including estimates of effect, confidence intervals and P-values
• Critique published analyses of clinical trials, identifying common problems
• Report statistical methods and results appropriately and transparently
• Contribute more confidently to a clinical trial team
• Explain the crucial role that statistics play in a clinical trial, in its design, conduct, analysis, and reporting