BIOSTATISTICS AND

EPIDEMIOLOGY
Ms. PAMELAH N. KIHEMBO
BSc. HMN, MPHN

23rd/Feb/2023
Agenda

 Student Introductions
 Students expectations
 Formation of groups
 Course outline
 Introduction to the course
 COURSE OUTLINE
HMN1204 Introduction to Biostatistics and Epidemiology (3 CU)
Short description
 An outline of concepts of statistics commonly applied to health sciences.

Learning outcomes
After completing the course, students should be able to:
 Make numerical summaries of data.
 Use standard statistical techniques to analyse epidemiological data.
 Explain statistical inference of means and proportions.
 Discuss biases and confounding scenario in data collected.
 Course outline cont……
 Intellectual, practical and transferable skills – Application of data analysis using SPSS.
The students will develop basic skills for data analysis and interpretation.
 Teaching and Learning pattern
The unit will be given as lectures, class discussions, tutorials, Practical and assignments.
 Indicative content
A comprehensive introduction to biostatistics and epidemiologic concepts and methods.
Topics include definitions; descriptive statistics; probability concepts; sampling
distributions; estimation; inference; confidence intervals; hypothesis testing; measures of
disease frequency; study designs, data analysis, bias and confounding. Examples are
drawn from nutrition and other health sciences. The focus is on the underlying reasoning
behind the techniques rather than just pure application.
 Assessment method
Continuous Assessment (CA) shall consist of tests, assignments and student
seminar presentations. This will contribute between 30% and 50% of the
final course unit mark.
 
 Course unit is weighted as 3 Credit Units. The written exam duration is 3
hours given at the end of the semester which shall contribute a
maximum of 70% of the final mark. The pass mark is 50%.
Indicative reading list
Food and nutrient exposures: what to consider when evaluating epidemiologic evidence. Sempos CT, Liu K, Ernst ND. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1999 Jun;69 (6):13
Issues in the long-term evaluation of diet in longitudinal studies. Sempos CT, Flegal KM, Johnson CL. Journal of Nutrition. 1993;123:406-12. sempos2.pdf
Statistics in Medicine Tutorial in Biostatistics: An introduction to hierarchical linear modeling. Statist. Med. 18, 855Ð888 Sullivan LM, Dukes KA, Losina E. Sullivan.pdf. 1999.
Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis for Epidemiology: A Practical Guide: Available from UNC Libraries as e-book (ebrary)
 Introduction to the course

Terms and definitions.

Biostatistics- The application of statistics in medical research
 Clinical research – study of disease progression
 Epidemiology – study of health related factors and its application in the
prevention and management of diseases.
 Pharmacology – development of drugs
 Nutrition – effect of nutrients/lifestyle on body metabolism
 Medicine – Application of drug use to manage diseases
 Terms in Biostatistics
Data : all the information we collect to answer the research question
Variables : – Outcome (obesity) treatment (physical activity levels), study population
characteristics (gender, SES)
Subjects : – units on which characteristics are measured ( People who eventually
participate in the study after selection)
Observations : – data elements ( measuring physical activity levels, i.e sedentary ( 0 –
activity, sitting most of the days), moderately active( light movements e.g. house work),
physically active ( exercising 3-5 times a week for at least 30 minutes).
Population : – all the subjects of interest ( HMN students at MUK)
Sample : – a subset of the population for which data are collected (People who eventually
participate in the study after selection, in this case, all the HMN students who will be
enrolled in the study)
 Data
Data is a collection of facts, such as numbers, words, measurements, observations
or just descriptions of things. Data can either be qualitative or quantitative.
Qualitative Data
Qualitative data is the type of data that describes something for example attitude,
behaviour, acceptance, reasoning, among others. Qualitative data can either be
Nominal or Ordinal.
Quantitative data
 Quantitative data can be Discrete or Continuous:
 Discrete data can only take certain values (like whole numbers)
Continuous data can take any value (within a range)/ fractions
Data Types.
 QUANTITATIVE DATA
Quantitative data can be expressed in numerical values, making it countable and
including statistical data analysis. These kinds of data are also known as Numerical
data. It answers the questions like “how much,” “how many,” and “how often.” For
example, the price of a phone, the computer’s ram, the height or weight of a
person, etc., falls under quantitative data. 

Quantitative data can be used for statistical manipulation. These data can be
represented on a wide variety of graphs and charts, such as bar graphs, histograms,
scatter plots, boxplots, pie charts, line graphs, etc.
Examples of Quantitative Data : 
 Height or weight of a person or object
 Room Temperature
 Scores and Marks (Ex: 59, 80, 60, etc.)

Quantitative data types
1. Discrete data
Discrete data key characteristics:
 You can count the data. It is usually units counted in whole numbers.
 The values cannot be divided into smaller pieces and add additional meaning.
 You cannot measure the data. By nature, discrete data cannot be measured at
all. For example, you can measure your weight with the help of a scale. So,
your weight is not a discrete data.
 It has a limited number of possible values e.g. days of the month.
 Discrete data is graphically displayed by a bar graph.
Discrete data
Examples
 The number of students in a class.
 The number of workers in a company.
 The number of parts damaged during transportation.
 Shoe sizes.
 Number of languages an individual speaks.
 The number of home runs in a baseball game.
 The number of test questions you answered correctly.
 Instruments in a shelf.
 The number of siblings a randomly selected individual has.
 Continuous Data
Continuous data are in the form of fractional numbers. It can be the version of an
android phone, the height of a person, the length of an object, etc. Continuous
data represents information that can be divided into smaller levels. The continuous
variable can take any value within a range.
Examples include:
 Height of a person
 Speed of a vehicle
 “Time-taken” to finish the work 
 Wi-Fi Frequency
 Market share price
 Qualitative Data
 Qualitative or Categorical Data is data that can’t be measured or counted in the
form of numbers. These types of data are sorted by category, not by number.
That’s why it is also known as Categorical Data. These data consist of audio,
images, symbols, or text. The gender of a person, i.e., male, female, or others, is
qualitative data.
 What language do you speak
 Favourite holiday destination
 Opinion on something (agree, disagree, or neutral)
 Colours
 Nominal Data
 Nominal Data is used to label variables without any order or quantitative value.
The color of hair can be considered nominal data, as one color can’t be compared
with another color.
 The name “nominal” comes from the Latin name “nomen,” which means “name.”
With the help of nominal data, we can’t do any numerical tasks or can’t give any
order to sort the data. These data don’t have any meaningful order; their values
are distributed into distinct categories.
Examples of Nominal Data :
 Colour of hair (Blonde, red, Brown, Black, etc.)
 Marital status (Single, Widowed, Married)
 Nationality (Indian, German, American)
 Gender (Male, Female, Others)
 Eye Color (Black, Brown, etc.)
 Ordinal Data
 Ordinal data have natural ordering where a number is present in some kind of
order by their position on the scale. These data are used for observation like
customer satisfaction, happiness, etc., but we can’t do any arithmetical tasks on
them. 
 Ordinal data, unlike nominal data, involves some order; ordinal numbers stand in
relation to each other in a ranked fashion.
 For example, suppose you receive a survey from your favourite restaurant that
asks you to provide feedback on the service you received. You can rank the
quality of service as "1" for poor, "2" for below average, "3" for average, "4" for
very good and "5" for excellent.
 The data collected by this survey are examples of ordinal data. Here the
numbers assigned have an order or rank; that is, a ranking of "4” is better than a
ranking of “2.”
Differences between nominal and Ordinal Data

Nominal Data Ordinal Data

Nominal data can’t be quantified, Ordinal data gives some kind of
neither they have any intrinsic ordering sequential order by their position on the
scale

Nominal data is qualitative data or Ordinal data is said to be “in-between”

categorical data qualitative data and quantitative data
hey don’t provide any quantitative value, They provide sequence and can assign
neither can we perform any arithmetical numbers to ordinal data but cannot
operation perform the arithmetical operation

Nominal data cannot be used to compare Ordinal data can help to compare one
with one another item with another by ranking or ordering

Examples: Eye colour, housing style, examples: Economic status, customer

gender, hair colour, religion, marital satisfaction, education level, letter
status, ethnicity, etc grades, etc
 Variables
 A variable is something that can take more than one value and values can be words
or numbers.
 Examples of variables include:
 Age
 Sex
 Religion
 Number of children
 Smoking history
 Diet type
 Race
 Place of residence etc.
 Types of variables
 There are two types of variables; i.e. categorical or continuous variables.
 Continuous variables are variables which can take on any value e.g age, number
of children, marks obtained in an exam, weight, height e.t.c.
 Categorical variables are divided into different categories and a person can fall
within a particular category e.g religion, gender, residence, race, life style,
disease state, marital status, political orientation among others.
Measurement of variables
 Variables are measured by their dimensions i.e what defines them. For
example when measuring race, you may need to understand that there are
many races in Uganda including the baganda, Banyankole, Batooro, Banyoro,
Bagisu, Iteso, Alur, Karamajong, Madi, Basoga, Bagwere, Bakiga etc.
 To measure someone’s race, you just ask them which race they fall in and you
just record.
 While other variables are more difficult to measure e.g social economic status,
where you may need to know someone’s income, expenses, possessions e.t.c.
Another example is BMI, where you have to first measure someone’s height and
weight and then calculate their BMI.