SCC460: Research Methods & Health Data Science Fundamentals

• Programme
  • Research Methods
  • Fundamentals of Data Science
• Reading Material

• Five sessions
• Friday morning lectures delivered live via Teams.
• 15 October 2021 - 12 November 2021

Sessions by week

The lecture slides by week

1. What is research?
2. Language of research framing
3. Research process and empirical methods
4. Methods in design engineering / Study design and validity
5. Ethics in research

• Five sessions
• Pre-recorded material, Friday afternoon Q&A and/or guest speaker
• 15 October 2021 - 12 November 2021

Sessions by week

Slides by week

1. What is data science? / Data collection and cleaning
2. Data bias / Data integration and transformation
3. Big data technologies
4. Feature engineering and model fitting / Experiment design
5. Testing hypotheses / Visualisation

Links to pre-recorded material, and some guest lectures

• Week 1

  • Organiser's Research Background
  • What is data science
  • Data gathering & cleaning

• Week 2

  • Data Bias
  • Data Integration & Transformation

• Week 3

  • Big Data Technologies
  • SaaS
  • SaaS
  • IaaS
  • PaaS
  • Guest Lecture

• Week 4

  • Feature Engineering & Model Fitting
  • Experiment Design
  • Guest Lecture

• Week 5

  • Testing Hypotheses, Analysis
  • Visualisation

• The Research Methods Knowledge Base, William M. K. Trochim
  This is an excellent introduction to research methods, and parts of the book are mandatory reading in preparation for week 2 and we will quiz you on the material. You will note that the book introduces methods from a social science background but the concepts apply to empirical research in any discipline. As you read through the basics, try to think about examples in your own field to relate the concepts to something concrete (e.g., try and relate concepts to a previous project you have carried out, or just make up examples).

• Researching Information Systems and Computing, Briony J. Oates, 2006/2021, SAGE Publications/...
  This book provides a lightweight introduction and overview of research methods. It is very accessible and presents research methods in the context of research in information systems, software engineering and computer science. The book is not mandatory.

And:

• Concept Mapping for Planning & Evaluation by Mary Kane & William M. K. Trochim
• How We Analyzed the COMPAS Recidivism Algorithm
• Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
• Order routing optimisation — a key ingredient of an efficient supply chain | by Dominic Wigmore | Gousto Engineering & Data | Medium