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 (online)

To successfully complete this course, you need to actively participate in the discussion forums and complete the learning unit assignments, including:

• Demonstrating active participation in the forums and assignments overall (25% of the final mark)
• Creating a presentation (either on paper or as a Powerpoint, perhaps together with an optional video) with a group of peers (75% of the final mark). You are allowed to redo the final assignment once.

Even though you can manage your own time our courses are not intended as individual education. We offer personalized online learning with lots of interaction with peer students, the E-moderator and lecturers. 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. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log on several times per week.

Note that the starting dates of courses, interim deadlines, and dates of exams are fixed, but you can choose when and where you want to watch web lectures and work on assignments. The e-moderator of the course will inform you about the beginning of the course and about deadlines during the course.

The average required study workload for the courses of MSc Epidemiology Postgraduate Online is 14 hours per week. You will need this time to study, to keep up with the assignments and course material.

To enroll in this course, you need:

• A Bachelor’s degree in life sciences (or the equivalent)
• Sufficient proficiency in English reading and writing
• Basic skills in working with the computer program SPSS or R
• Access to the computer program SPSS or the free program R
• Sufficient understanding of epidemiology, study design and data analysis. Courses offering this knowledge include Introduction to Epidemiology, Study Design in Etiologic Research and Classical Methods in Data Analysis

Please note that this course is part of an existing program within the Graduate School of Life Sciences. Tuitition fees may alter during the year.