Admitted Fall 2018 or Later

  1. Develop novel epidemiological research questions by critically reviewing and evaluating public health literature.
  2. Use epidemiologic theories of disease causation to conceptualize a general casual framework that captures determinants of disease occurrence.
  3. Demonstrate proficiency in selecting and conducting the most appropriate study design to address a research question.
  4. Explain conceptual definitions of exposure variables, outcome variables, mediators, and modifiers in ways consistent with the casual framework guiding the research.
  5. Identify potential confounders, information bias, and selection bias that distort the validity of a study and ability to minimize them through design, data collection, and analysis.
  6. Understand required elements to estimate sample size and apply methods to provide valid estimates of parameters for sample size calculations for different study designs.
  7. Demonstrate skills in public health data collection and management.
  8. Develop analytic strategies for various study designs, guided by the principles of epidemiology, to account for confounding, interaction effects, and intermediate effects.
  9. Understand the rationale and assumptions underlying major statistical techniques used to analyze date from epidemiological studies.
  10. Critically evaluate measures of association (e.g., odds ratio, risk ratio, rate ratio, or hazard ratio) and understand how to select between them for various study designs.
  11. Demonstrate proficiency in communication skills in reports of findings from research projects (conference presentations, scientific publications, and grant writing).
  12. Develop expertise in an area of independent research interest.

 

Admitted Fall 2017 or Earlier

  1. Critically evaluate social determinants of health.
  2. Explain predictors and mechanisms of disease or health events.
  3. Calculate advanced epidemiology measures.
  4. Critically evaluate measures of association.
  5. Design, analyze, and evaluate an epidemiologic study.
  6. Critically appraise epidemiologic literature.
  7. Demonstrate skills in public health data collection and management.
  8. Critically evaluate questionnaire and survey instruments.
  9. Design and evaluate interventions to reduce prevalence of major public health problems.
  10. Critique the use of meta-analytic statistical techniques.
  11. Describe and apply statistical approaches to address threats to validity in epidemiologic studies.
  12. Compare clustered data with traditional epidemiologic data from survey and randomized clinical trials.
  13. Analyze causal associations.
  14. Characterize issues associated with missing data.
  15. Appraise how quantitative and qualitative data can be integrated into mixed methods in epidemiologic research.
  16. Develop expertise in an area of independent research interest.