Date
September – October 2026
Duration
168 hrs / 6 ECTs
Location
VU / online
Organizer
This course is part of the Neurosciences master program at the VU. It counts in the category "Courses on other subjects". Statistical data analysis is the process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modelling data in order to test scientific hypotheses and answer research questions. Each lecture will provide the theoretical background. The practicals and weekly obligatory assignments will guide students through a series of tailored research problems that they will tackle using the statistical package R. Students will receive hands-on experience in the main steps involved in statistical analyses: from the formulation of hypotheses, selection of the most appropriate test, checking of assumptions, cleaning of data, and running of analyses in R, to formally reporting the obtained results.
Students will: – acquire basic statistical knowledge of e.g. research design, distributions, measurement levels of data, and statistical tests – learn to formulate hypotheses, and select the most suited statistical analysis for a particular experiment or research design. – learn to explore and test underlying assumptions, and formally report the results. – learn how to perform statistical analyses in R.
The lectures of this course will provide an overview of quantitative methods that are frequently used in neuroscience research. These include: – correlation – regression – (paired) t-test – (repeated measures) ANOVA – multi-level analysis – p-values – multiple testing problem – Type I and II errors – sampling – statistical power
Students are assumed to be familiar with chapters 1-5, 7, and 9 of the book "Discovering statistics using R" by Field, Miles & Field before entering the course. The first lectures, practicals, and assignments will provide a short review of these chapters. A short diagnostic entry test will be provided to give students insight into their knowledge of statistics at the start of the course.
168 hrs / 6 ECTs Please note that the course will take you about 20 hours/week, due to the practicals, assignments, etc. . You are expected to participate in all parts. This course counts for 60 hours in the ONWAR neuroscience category of the ONWAR training program. The remaining 108 hours can be used under the category other subjects
