Research Design and Statistics Unit

What is the RDSU?

PowerPoint Overview

The Research Design and Statistics Unit (RDSU) provides, under the direction of Prof. Roger L. Brown, consultation to nursing faculty, doctoral students and candidates, and post doctoral fellows in research design, methods, data collection, questionnaire development, statistical analyses, research software, and data management.

History of the RDSU

The RDSU was originally formed by Dr. Brown in 1990 in the Clinical Cancer Center to respond to physician and nurse research projects dealing with educational or social aspects of medical and health research. The unit re-located to the Department of Family Medicine in 1995, and then again to the School of Nursing in 1997, where it resides today. The RDSU has participated in almost 100 research grants, and has help write many more, with at one time a staff of 10 statistician/data analysts. The RDSU continues its multidisciplinary mission of support and collaborative efforts between nursing and medicine.

Consultants from the RDSU address needs for alternative procedures, detail the advantages and disadvantages of multiple designs and methods, and identify issues for investigators to consider in designing a study or interpreting data. Investigators are encouraged to contact RDSU consultants during the development of study design and procedures. RDSU includes access to and utilization of the several computer systems and limited support of statistical software packages.

The RDSU now moves into a new collaborative effort with the UW Institute for Clinical and Transitional Research, to better assist Nursing researchers with the new research infrastructure.

What resources are provided on this site?

Library area. This area contains both statistical, design and methodological papers, and online statistical and design seminars.

The RDSU has been collecting these papers for years and possesses a substantial collection. These papers are freely available to the public. All papers are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. You may obtain the PDF reader FREE from either the Simonds Center or online at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

The RDSU has established an agreement with colleagues at UCLA to share online seminar access. UCLA has developed a number of online seminars that faculty and staff may access. Please check out the seminars in the library. The majority of online seminars are in Flash format. The Flash movie software is free and may be easily downloaded.

Data Management and Data Entry
This area is dedicated to issues of data entry, data documentation and data management. The area is based around to software systems, EpiData Entry and DBMSCopy.

Statistical routines.
These are generally coded in JavaScript and provide help in performing statistical analysis. Some of these have been developed by the RDSU while others, produced elsewhere, can be reached by following links.

Medical and nursing routines.
Like the statistical routines, these are generally coded in JavaScript and provide help in performing statistical analysis. Some of these have been developed by the RDSU while others, produced elsewhere, can be reached by following links.

NEWS!!! New and exciting information.

Any questions or if there are topics you wish to see, please contact Roger Brown (rlbrown3@wisc.edu).