Nutritional Epidemiology (online)

The course will address methodological aspects involved in the design, conduct, analysis and interpretation of nutritional epidemiological research. You will learn about a whole range of subjects, including intra-individual variation, measurement of error, misclassification, correlated variables, population homogeneity, dietary assessment, validity/reproducibility of dietary assessment, nutritional biomarkers, and analysis issues such as energy adjustment methods and dietary pattern analyses. By studying these, you will gain the knowledge you need to ensure that your nutritional epidemiological research is accurate and the results valid. To succesfully complete this course you will need a degree in Life Sciences, a medical education is not required.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Design a well-constructed nutritional epidemiological study
• Explain the basic design considerations for nutritional epidemiological research
• Explain different methods of dietary assessment and their advantages/disadvantages for different study designs
• Explain the reproducibility and validity of different dietary assessment methods

In particular, you should be able to:

• Name sources of variation in the diet
• Use nutrition composition tables
• Use dietary biomarkers to assess dietary exposure
• Explain and utilize different methods to adjust for energy intake
• Use different methods to perform dietary pattern analyses
• Locate sources of measurement errors in dietary data, and apply different methods to correct these errors
• Adjust nutrient intake for total energy intake and perform dietary pattern analyses

Our courses are aimed at clinical researchers, nurses, general practitioners, and other health professionals who want to improve their skills in epidemiology, statistics and (clinical) research.

3 weeks, 14 hours per week

Please note, even though you can manage your own time our courses are not intended as individual education. By learning together you will gain depth in your learning process, which is very important. Therefore flexibility from students, a positive attitude towards teachers and peers and the willingness to learn together and help each other is invaluable to our courses

This course is offered once every two years. The next course will take place in the academic year 2025-2026.

However please note that the face to face version of this course is offered in April 2025.