Short Courses

WCE 2020 Short course details are available now!

The Short courses occur pre-congress and post-congress. Further details on registration pricing can be found here.

Details are constantly evolving so be sure to check back regularly for updates!


 

PRE-CONGRESS OFFERINGS

Location: Cancer Council Victoria, 615 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3004 (5 km from Convention Centre, accessible by public transport)
Date: Sunday 13 September 2020

Causal modelling: How to analyse a data set with a large number of variables

Professor Neil Pearce, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Time: 8:30 am—12:00 pm

This is a half-day course which will cover:
  1. Causation, variation and statistical modelling
  2. The difference between predictive and causal modelling
  3. Use and abuse of DAGs in causal modelling
  4. Minimising bias and multicollinearity
  5. Applying these concepts to analyse a data set with a large number of variables
This is a lecture/discussion-based course, and it is not planned to have formal data analysis practical sessions. However, participants are welcome to bring examples of their work and current methodological problems for discussion, and where appropriate, these discussions could involve analyses of their data sets using Stata.

Introduction to multi-level mixed regression models with applications to linear regression in Stata.

Sponsored by

Dr. Arul Earnest, Department of Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Australia

Time: 8:30 am—12:00 pm

This half-day workshop is designed specifically for those interested in using multi-level mixed regression models. A brief comparison between the various analytical approaches to hierarchical data will be shown including Generalised Estimating Equations, Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Models, followed by an application of linear mixed model to health data using Stata’s xtmixed command.
 

PRE-CONGRESS OFFERINGS

Location: Cancer Council Victoria, 615 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3004 (5 km from Convention Centre, accessible by public transport)
Date: Sunday 13 September 2020

Causal Mediation Analysis

Professor Tyler VanderWeele, Harvard School of Public Health

Time: 1:00 pm—4:30 pm

Mediation analysis concerns assessing the mechanisms and pathways by which causal effects operate. We introduce the fundamentals of causal mediation analysis, and describe the relationship between traditional methods for mediation in the biomedical and the social sciences and new methods in causal inference. For dichotomous, continuous, and time-to-event outcomes, discussion will be given as to when the standard approaches to mediation analysis are or are not valid, and how to extend these to broader settings. The course will present SAS, SPSS, Stata, and R macros to implement these techniques. The course will also cover sensitivity analysis techniques to assess how sensitive the conclusions are to violations of the no-confounding assumptions.

Risk estimation – new developments

Professor Leigh Blizzard, Menzies Institute for Medical Research, U Tasmania

Time: 1:00 pm—5:00 pm

Ratios or differences of risk in prospective studies, and of prevalence in cross-sectional studies, can be estimated using the binomial regression model for binary outcomes. The estimates enable easily understood comparisons of occurrence of health-related events. Numerical instability can arise when fitting these models using standard statistical software but, fortunately, a complete remedy for all such estimation difficulties is now available. This workshop provides a tutorial on the estimation of risk ratios and risk differences, including the assessment of statistical interaction on the multiplicative and additive scales. The improved methodology will be demonstrated using R and Stata software, and participants with their own laptops will be assisted to use the code with example data.
 

PRE-CONGRESS OFFERINGS

Location: Cancer Council Victoria, 615 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3004 (5 km from Convention Centre, accessible by public transport)
Date: Sunday 13 September 2020

Introduction to Mendelian randomization

Alice Carter (PhD candidate) and Kaitlin Wade (Research Fellow), University of Bristol

Time: 8:30 am—4:30 pm

Mendelian randomization is a study design that uses human genetic variants as instrumental variables to test the causal effect of a (non-genetic) risk factor on a disease or health-related outcome. Since its first proposal in 2003, it has been increasingly used to determine population causal effects using observational epidemiological data. This course aims to introduce the framework, assumptions, strengths and limitations of Mendelian randomization. Students will learn about one-sample and two-sample Mendelian randomization, including gaining practical experience of how to apply these methods to real data provided. They will also learn about a range of sensitivity analyses that explore likely violations of the assumptions of Mendelian randomization. Prior experience of using Mendelian randomization is not required, but participants should have an understanding of basic genetics and aetiological epidemiological principles. Please get in touch if you have any questions about the course suitability or content ([email protected]).
 

POST-CONGRESS OFFERINGS

Location: The University of Melbourne (room location to be advised)
Dates: Thursday—Saturday 17-19 September 2020

Contemporary Epidemiology – a 3-day Intensive Short Course

Professor Tony Blakely, Melbourne School of Population Health Professor John Lynch, The University of Adelaide

Time: 9:00 am—5:00 pm

This intensive short course provides a systematic overview of epidemiological concepts and methods, building up from sources of error (confounding, information bias, selection bias) to bias analysis methods, then a range of contemporary methods. The course is premised on a counterfactual and potential outcomes approach to epidemiology. This course has been co-taught in Australia by Professors Tony Blakely and John Lynch for many years and is highly regarded.

Interested delegates are referred to the University of Melbourne for enquiries