Statistics team
Background
Primary Care Research includes a team of four statisticians who provide support to projects within the theme. Between them, the stats team has more than 30 years experience of applying statistical methods to primary care research.
Primary care offers some special challenges for a statistician. One is the very wide range of statistical methods required to address different types of research study. Randomised control trials are often not feasible and so observational and quasi-experimental designs are frequently required. Data is typically clustered (eg by GP practice) and multilevel (patients within practices). Increasingly, primary care datasets are very large in size, often containing hundreds of thousands (eg GPRD) or even millions (GPPS) of records.
We believe that to achieve the highest possible quality in research, statisticians should be involved at all stages of a project, from initial design and instrument selection, through recruitment, data collection, analysis, and development of publications. The more the statistician understands the context of a project and its history, the better positioned they are to make the best decisions from a statistical perspective. We therefore seek to make our statisticians full members of each of the research teams they work with.
In addition to supporting research projects in the theme, the statisticians also support students undertaking post-graduate degrees within the group and conduct original statistical methodology research.
Our aims
- To provide high quality statistical support to projects and students within Primary Care Research