Statistics and Epidemiology - Part 2: Overview of Study Design

In partnership with the NIH Clinical Center's Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology Service (BCES), the NIH Library is offering several trainings that cover general concepts behind statistics and epidemiology. These trainings will help participants better understand and prepare data, interpret results and findings, design and prepare studies, and understand the results in published literature. 

This three-hour online training will provide a review of study designs in biomedical research. This training will also cover details related to case studies/series, ecological, cross-sectional, case-control, and cohort studies, clinical trials, and other study designs and considerations. Time will be devoted to questions from attendees and references will be provided for in-depth self-study. 

By the end of this training, attendees will be able to:  

• Describe two broad categories of study designs 

• Provide examples of descriptive and analytic studies 

• Explain the advantages and disadvantages of analytic studies 

• Understand the differences between observational and experimental studies 

• List other types of atypical study designs