Practical Applications for Health Statistics Using MS Excel

This lab textbook is designed to teach undergraduate students how to use Microsoft Excel within the context of a health statistics course. The labs begin with introductory exercises teaching students basic navigation, terminology, and functions within Excel. The lab exercises are designed to build on themselves, applying previously learned skills and adding new ones with each lab. Students learn how to organize data, write formulas, create graphs with appropriate components, and use the data analysis toolpak to conduct basic statistical functions.

The lab culminates with a group project focusing on one of a variety of provided health topics. Each group is provided with a dataset that includes incidence, mortality, risk factors and demographics that they must apply their Excel and statistical knowledge and skills to analyze, summarize, and present their findings in both poster and presentation formats.

All lab exercises and the final group project use publicly available health datasets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This offers the students an opportunity to work with real health data and apply their statistical knowledge to a dataset representing populations throughout the United States.