Applied Statistical Research Methods

While conducting research into vulnerability (Frailty), among other things, a lot of data from patients and professionals becomes available that can be used to answer socially important research questions.

The Applied Statistical Research Methods research group has many partnerships with research groups within the Centre of Expertise Healthy Aging and researchers from the field. It is daily work to apply new techniques from statistics and artificial intelligence, often using statistical programming language R. Techniques such as mixed modeling, statistical learning and model selection go hand in hand with data visualisations. Much of the research falls under the research lines Assessment, Outcome Analysis and Research Design, which address questions such as:

• How can participants' responses to questionnaire items best be analysed so that the underlying concept of 'frailty', 'willingness to use information technology' or 'reciprocity in the workplace' is properly measured?
• Which techniques can best be used to analyse the effect of interventions in health care, in which patients are measured repeatedly?
• How many patients are needed for a given statistical design?
• What conclusions can be drawn from several published studies on the same problem and what does this mean in practice?