B019839 - METHODLOGICAL PRINCIPALS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH IN REHABILITATION

Italian

The course provides basic elements to acquire knowledge and competences on rehabilitation research, such as: scientific literature as a foundation of EBP, scientific method and clinical-epidemiological approach, anatomy and physiology of clinical research, study design, epidemiological approach to diagnosis and prognosis, ethical aspects of research

Herbert R, et al. Fisioterapia basata sulle evidenze. Edra 2014

By the end of the course, the student will acquire knowledge and basic competences on:
- Retrieval, understanding and critical interpretation of scientific literature in rehabilitation as a foundation of evidence-based practice
- Design and conduction of scientific studies in rehabilitation

Knowledge acquired will be applied to:
- Conduction of literature search
- Participation to designing, conducting, interpreting and presenting research studies

Propaedeutic courses as indicated by the Faculty Board.

Lessons, laboratories

None

Oral examination to verify achievement knowledges and competences as indicated in the learning objectives

1) Scientific literature
- Literature search
- Types of scientific articles
- Online resources
- How to perform a literature search
2) The scientific method in rehabilitation research
- Observation and inference, conjectures and proofs
- Clinical-epidemiological investigation model
- Causation
3) Anatomy and physiology of scientific research
- Components of research (research question, background, design, participants, variables, statistical aspects, ethical issues)
- Internal and external validity
- Error in research
- Steps in the development of a research project
4) Study design
- Incidence and prevalence
- Absolute risk, attributable risk, relative risk, odds ratio, confidence interval
- Observational and experimental studies
- More on causation: hierarchy of proofs
5) Epidemiological approach to diagnosis and prognosis
- Validation of assessment tools
- Sensitivity and specificity
6) Role of statistics in biomedical research
- Types of variables
- Data entry spreadsheet
- Tables and graphs
- Normal distribution
- Central tendency and variability
- Hypothesis testing
- Parameter estimating
7) Evaluation of diagnostic tests
- Sensitivity and specificity
- Positive and negative predictive value
- ROC analysis
8) Ethics of research
- Protecting the participant: Helsinki declaration
- Informed consent
- Ethics committee
- Protecting research's and researcher's integrity