CERTaIN: Observational Studies and Registries

While randomized controlled trials are considered to be the "gold standard" in health research, they cannot always be performed, for ethical or practical reasons. Observational studies gather information from data that has already been collected, or by observing and measuring patients' changes in health status and their response to interventions outside of a clinical trial. In this course, you will learn to identify the characteristics of observational studies, to interpret the results of observational studies, and to describe the use of health registries in comparative effectiveness research (CER). This course includes the following 11 lectures: Overview of Using Observational Data in Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) Cancer Registries and Data Linkage SEER-Medicare and Other Data Sources Overview of Analytic Methods I Overview of Analytic Methods II Longitudinal Data Analysis Advanced Methods in CER I Advanced Methods in CER II Survival Analysis Analysis of Medical Cost Data in Observational Studies Healthcare Policy Research This course is intended for anyone interested in comparative effectiveness research (CER) and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) methods. This course is supported by grant number R25HS023214 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

• Define several types of observational studies and describe their characteristics
• Interpret observational study results
• Describe how health registries can be used for CER

• Introduction course (CERTaIN.1x) recommended, but not required.