There are three primary objectives of biostatistics as a prostate cancer research core resource: design of studies, producing quality controlled databases for ongoing studies, and state-of-the-art statistical analysis. A resource containing these capabilities is available to SPORE Projects through an experienced master's level statistician and supervision by a senior statistician. To achieve design objectives, a statistician for prostate cancer research will be constantly available to SPORE investigators. Informal discussion of project feasibility and formal calculation of study design parameters such as power and sample size will be accomplished routinely. Specialized (laboratory) data basis will initially be prepared by individual investigators. However, to integrate these databases with clinical outcomes, a quality controlled relational database will be constructed using the resources of Oncology Biostatistics. These quality control data will be the basis for final analyses of clinical outcomes. All statistical analyses will use state-of-the-art methods and will be conducted or supervised by the senior statistician. Because these analyses are exploratory and are meant to assess new methods, there will be an emphasis on estimation of important clinical and laboratory parameters with confidence intervals rather than statistical hypothesis testing.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 750 publications
