Education & Training

The Division of Research and the Comprehensive Clinical Research Unit have created an online course designed to help physicians, other healthcare professionals, and research staff develop an understanding of fundamental research principles and methods.  The course, NCAL Division of Research: Introduction to Clinical Research, can be found on KP Learn.  The course consists of targeted educational modules, focused on preparing clinical researchers to design new clinical research projects. Throughout the course of each learning module, users have the opportunity to test their knowledge by answering a set of questions.  The first set of modules introduces basic research themes, definitions, and examples for the following topics:

• Choosing a Research Question
• Observational Study Designs
• Experimental Study Designs/Clinical Trials
• Selecting Study Subjects
• Choosing & Measuring Variables
• Confounding and Bias
• Kaiser Permanente Data Sources for Research

Furthermore, we are in the process of developing additional modules which will delve deeper into the following issues:

• Descriptive Statistics  
• Hypothesis Testing & P-values  
• Sample Size & Power