The Importance of Statistical Competencies for Medical Research Learners

It is very important for medical professionals and medical researchers to be literate in statistics. However, we have found that the degree of literacy that is required should not be identical for every statistical competency or even for every learner. We first begin by describing why the development, teaching, and assessment of statistical competencies for medical professionals and medical researchers are critical tasks. We next review our three substantial efforts at developing a comprehensive list of statistical competencies that can be used as a guide for what medical research learners should know about statistics, for curricular development, and for assessment of statistical education. We then summarize the origin and the inclusion of the statistical competency items. We follow this with a description of potential uses and applications of the statistical competencies to improve targeted learning for medical research learners. Finally, we discuss implications of the statistical competencies for undergraduate statistics education. [This work was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Award Program in collaboration with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UL1 TR001417) and the Mayo Clinic (UL1 TR000135)].