Methods and Techniques of Medical-Legal and Forensic Investigation

Recommended Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of biostatistics.

Teaching Methods

During the research work the student will be encouraged to develop the biostatistics analysis autonomously. This will be confronted with theoretical-practical problems and concrete issues in the forensic context.

Learning Outcomes

- know how to investigate and publish in the area of Forensic and Legal Medicine

- define and distinguish descriptive statistics and inferential statistics: within this, estimation and hypothesis testing

- grasp the steps and requirements of a statistical analysis

- critically analyze the relevance of research questions and the corresponding choice of key measures

- distinguish between different study designs, knowing how to choose the most appropriate for each case

- format data appropriately for statistical analysis

- perform descriptive data analysis

- correctly select the appropriate hypothesis test given a research question

- perform simple inferential analyzes

- report statistical results.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

- Identification of research questions and discussion of their appropriateness in Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences

- Identification of main measures, discussion of the consequences of the choice made

- Study designs and their characteristics

- Ways to structure data for statistical analysis

- Techniques of identification of outliers and description of data

- Choice of appropriate statistical tests

- Introduction to inferential statistics (tests of hypotheses of comparison between groups, correlation, association and others)

- Data analysis in SPSS

- Statistical thinking applied

- Correct way to report statistical results.

Head Lecturer(s)

Francisco Manuel Andrade Corte-Real Gonçalves

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Production of a statistical analysis report and oral presentation: 100.0%

Bibliography

Depende dos trabalhos em curso e com orientação tutorial. Serão disponibilizadas as apresentações dos docentes e trabalhos realizados no Instituto nacional de Medicina Legal e Ciências Forenses. / It depends on the work in progress and with tutorial orientation. The presentations and works carried out at the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences will be made available.