Biostatistics workshops

Biostatistical thinking for Health Researchers (20 November)

Unlock the power of biostatistics in health research through our one-day,hands-on workshop. Designed with the modern health researcher in mind, this interactive workshop aims to demystify the often complex realm of biostatistics.

• Engage in small group activities to formulate your own research questions and hypotheses
• Delve into study design, exploring how to select samples and define populations effectively
• Consider approaches to data collection and their biostatistical implications
• Learn the core concepts of sampling distributions, p-values, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and various statistical test/models
• Apply your knowledge to analyse and interpret your own group's data

By the end of the day, you'll be equipped with foundational biostatistical skills, empowering you to take your health research to the next level

Causal Inference workshop (23 and 24 November)

The Biostatistics Centre is also hosting a two day Causal Inference workshop in Dunedin with Professor Michael Hudgens (Professor of Biostatistics and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics UNC-Chapel Hill) on the Thursday and Friday after the conference. Separate registration fee will be required - External rate: Early bird NZD$650.  Internal rate: Early bird (researchers/students at Otago)NZD$350. Standard full fee External rate: NZD$700. Standard full fee Internal rate: NZD$400. (Early bird rates are valid until 8 October). 

This workshop will provide an introduction to causal inference. We will cover parts I and II of the Hernan and Robins book "Causal Inference: What If" (2023). Topics to be covered include potential outcomes, effect modification, directed acyclic graphs, confounding, selection bias, g-methods including marginal structural models and the g-formula, doubly robust estimation, and instrumental variables. There will be breakout/lab sessions using software to analyze real data using causal inference methods. Participants must come with their own laptop with one of the following software packages installed: Stata, R, SAS, and Python. Code will be provided.

Instructor: Professor Michael Hudgens. Professor Michael Hudgens is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina. He also serves as the Co-Director of the UNC Causal Inference Research Lab. Professor Hudgens has co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed papers in statistical journals such as Biometrics, Biometrika, JASA and JRSS-B as well as biomedical journals such as the Lancet, Nature and New England Journal of Medicine. He currently serves as an associate editor for Biometrics. He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and has taught graduate level biostatistics courses at UNC for over 15 years.