Tentative table of contents for my second book (created 2010-07-24).
This page is moving to a new website.
As I mentioned in an earlier webpage, I am
talking to some publishers about writing a second book. The working title is
"Jumpstart Statistics: How to Restart Your Stalled Research Project." Here's a
tentative table of contents.
Preface
Introduction
- The first three steps in selecting a research hypothesis
- Choose an outcome measure
- Define your patient population
- Select your control group
- The first three steps in selecting a research design
- Decide if you can/should randomize
- Consider the advantages/disadvantages of retrospective versus
prospective research
- Think about the most efficient way to select subjects
- The first three steps in determining an appropriate sample size
- Define your research hypothesis
- Find a measure of variability for your outcome measure
- Specify the minimum clinically important difference
- The first three steps in developing a pilot study
- Visualize the bigger study in the future
- Identify planning gaps
- Think about where "Murphy's Law" might strike
- The first three steps in designing a questionnaire
- Brainstorm to develop a long list of questions/responses and then prune
back what isn't needed
- Get opinions about your questionnaire from content experts
- Pilot test your questionnaire
- The first thee steps in obtaining ethical approval for your study
- Establish your credentials as a researcher
- Demonstrate your concern for privacy rights
- Prepare a defensible strategy for data analysis
- The first three steps in data entry
- Arrange your data in a rectangular grid
- Create codes for categorical data
- Document missing values
- The first three steps in a descriptive data analysis
- Know your count
- Compute ranges and frequencies
- Examine relationships using crosstabs, boxplots, and/or scatterplots
- The first three steps in a linear regression analysis
- Plot your data and examine your assumptions
- Compute a simple model
- Compute an adjusted model
- The first three steps in a logistic regression analysis
- Examine raw probabilities using crosstabs
- Compute a simple model
- Compute an adjusted model
- The first three steps in a survival data analysis
- Plot Kaplan-Meier curves for each group
- Compare a simple survival model
- Compute an adjusted model
- The first three steps in a non-linear regression analysis
- Use calculus to explore the nature of your non-linear function
- Graph, re-graph, and graph again
- Compare your results to simpler and/or more complex models
- The first three steps in writing a methods section of a research paper
- Define who got in and who was left out
- Explain how you justified your sample size
- Document the statistical procedures and the statistical software that
you used
- The first three steps in writing a results section of a research paper
- Present general demographic information
- Prepare a flow chart of exclusions, refusals, and dropouts
- Present crude and adjusted estimates and their confidence intervals
- The first three steps in writing a discussion section of a research
paper
- Paint the big picture
- Acknowledge any weaknesses
- Play up any strengths
- The first three steps in setting up a quality control program
- Establish management support
- Measure your process
- Experiment