Graduate School of health and Medical Sciences

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Epidemiological methods in medical research
Provider: Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

Activity no.: 3602-27-00-00	There are 19 available seats
	Enrollment deadline: 03/12/2026

Date and time	05.01.2027, at: 08:00 - 05.02.2027, at: 15:00
Regular seats	25
Course fee	11,640.00 kr.
Lecturers	Thomas Gerds
ECTS credits	7.00

Contact person	Susanne Kragskov Laupstad E-mail address: skl@sund.ku.dk

Enrolment Handling/Course Organiser	PhD administration SUND E-mail address: phdkursus@sund.ku.dk

Enrolment guidelines This course is free of charge for PhD students at Danish universities (except Copenhagen Business School), and for PhD Students from NorDoc member faculties. All other participants must pay the course fee. Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at a Danish university, you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. This also applies to PhD students from NorDoc member faculties. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to applicants on the waiting list. Learning objectives On completion of the course, participants should be able to plan and conduct an epidemiological study by following the roadmap of targeted learning. Specifically, they should be able to: 1. formulate epidemiological research questions that have a clear clinical or public health interpretation 2. distinguish descriptive, predictive (pattern recognition) and causal questions and state whose decision or perspective the question is intended to inform 3. select and justify an epidemiological study design and data source as well as an estimation strategy 4. interpret findings in relation to the original question, intended population and decision-maker perspective 5. state the limitations in relation to the available data, and assumptions needed for desired interpretation 6. use the taught reasoning to critically assess epidemiological articles 7. implement epidemiological analyses in R using reproducible workflows Content Epidemiological research informs decisions made by patients, clinicians and public health authorities. These decision makers want the answers to different questions, as the patients may want to know their own prognosis under alternative treatment choices; a clinician may be concerned with outcomes across their patients; and a public health authority may need to consider population impact as well as the distribution of benefits and harms across social groups. A useful epidemiological analysis begins by asking what the overall purpose of the study is, including which population it concerns, and by asking specific research questions. This basic level course on epidemiological methods guides you through the roadmap of targeted learning. Rather than beginning with the type of outcome and selecting a corresponding regression model, we begin with the scientific question. Participants learn to translate scientific questions into statistical analyses and write a statistical analysis plan. We advocate for statistical analysis plans for all types of epidemiological research including purely descriptive studies: A poor plan is better than no plan. Participants learn about basic epidemiological concepts, such as confounding and interaction, and get an introduction to basic statistical methods, such as regression and standardization. Participants learn how to organize the steps from reading raw data into R to finpudset figures and tables ready for a scientific article. The aim is not to offer one automatic method for every setting, but to develop a disciplined way of connecting a substantive question to an interpretable answer on the theoretical side and hands-on experience with reproducible data analysis on the other side. This includes knowledge about strength and limitations of the analyses as well as well-organized and transparent R-codes. Participants The course is intended as a basic course for Ph.D.-students in health sciences with interest in epidemiologic research. Knowledge in epidemiology, statistics and programming is not a requirement. However, having completed the PhD course "Basic Statistics for Health Researchers" and the Ph.D.-course "Introduction to R for Basic Statistics" is advantageous. Max. 25 participants. Relevance to graduate programmes The course is relevant to PhD students from the following graduate programmes at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, UCPH: All graduate programmes Language English Form Lectures and computer exercises Course director Thomas A Gerds, Professor at the Section of Biostatistics; tag@biostat.ku.dk Teachers Katrine Strandberg-Larsen, Professor at the Section of Epidemiology, University of Copenhagen. Kathrine Kold Sørensen, Assistant Professor at the Section of Epidemiology, University of Copenhagen. Dates January 2027: 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 22, 26, 29 February 2027: 2, 5 All days 8.00-15.00. Course location CSS Registration Please register before 3 December 2026 Expected frequency Once a year Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Applications from other participants will be considered after the last day of enrolment. Note: All applicants are asked to submit invoice details in case of no-show, late cancellation or obligation to pay the course fee (typically non-PhD students). If you are a PhD student, your participation in the course must be in agreement with your principal supervisor.

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