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Category: Project

Description: Short R training course for medical students and other clinical researchers. Course duration is 2x3.5 hours. Basic concepts of R for data analysis are introduced. Components: setup of an R Project in R Studio, data loading from comma-separated value files or Excel files, data preparation, creation of descriptive tables, graphics, and simple statistical tests. Course structure: sandwich principle, where short receptive phases of learning are alternated with expressive phases. Receptive phases are performed with a simple real medical data example on slides and in demonstrations in R Studio, expressive phases with a more complex real dataset from a published RCT, with which the same basic data analysis steps are trained in simple exercises in the lectures and the primary outcome of the RCT is recalculated. Along the way, basic concepts of the R programming language are taught, such as the definition of objects and classes, data frames, and subsetting, functions and their arguments, together with help files, how to find and load relevant packages, and handling of missing values. After the course, participants should be able to perform an analysis with own data in R, potentially by consulting additional sources for help such as R help files and internet searches.