Dates: Friday, July 29th to Friday, August 19th
Format: Remote, synchronous sessions on Friday afternoons (tentatively 12pm to 2pm Eastern), with asynchronous material during the weeks.
Overview:
Identifying causal relations is fundamental to understanding which social and behavioral factors cause variations in obesity, which is a field of both intervention and prevention. Discussions of causation are often limited to a dichotomy of ordinary association tests versus randomized controlled trials, yet there are many other considerations and techniques available to advance causal understanding of obesity. Effectively employing techniques to produce, evaluate, and select among intervention and prevention strategies, as well as to understanding obesity's root causes, requires understanding of underlying principles to tailor approaches to specific and varying situations. Advances in behavioral obesity research require input from disciplines including statistics, economics, psychology, epidemiology, mathematics, philosophy, behavior, genetics, and more. This course includes four interactive, remote, synchronous sessions in conjunction with three weeks of engaging online material to provide key fundamental principles underlying a broad array of techniques, and experience in applying those principles and techniques through guided discussion of real examples in obesity research.