Check out Dr. Wolfson's tips, presented at an EBOSS seminar in November 2013. Check out this supervisor checklist, presented at an EBOSS seminar in October 2009. Finally, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at McGill offers more general advice (not specific to EBOH but still useful!): The Supervision website [www.mcgill.ca/gradsupervision] offers over 40 pages of research-based practical advice and guidance on the supervisory relationship so that common problems in supervision can be avoided and degrees can be completed without needless delays.
Are you doing a systematic review? Some students in the department recommend using Rayyan, a free web-based and mobile-based app, to easily screen articles and collaborate with others. Check out this detailed guide from McGill librarians on how to use it! https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/rayyan/gettingstarted
The R Project for Statistical Computing (or just "R")
R is free! Download and install: https://cran.r-project.org/ Learn R: Quick-R, by Dr. Robert I. Kabacoff, contains good examples and is very useful for learning R.
Rstudio Download and install: https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/
STATA
Stata is not free. Download and install: STATA may be purchased from the official site at STATA.com. Learn STATA:
SAS is generally not free, but McGill provides access to students, faculty and staff. Download and install: SAS.com. McGill students, faculty and staff can download and install SAS here. Learn SAS:
The Department of Psychology at York University's SAS Information Guides provide a useful introduction to SAS. See in particular the SAS Program Steps document, which provides "an overview of SAS procedures and SAS programming statements."
The UCLA Acadmemic Technology Services' SAS website provides tools such as the SAS Starter Kit, various examples for performing statistical analyses on SAS, and it is also completely searchable, allowing users to look for SAS tips and guides that fit their learning needs. Go to the general stats website to find instructions for SAS/SPSS/Stata.
SPSS
SPSS is not free. Download and install: SPSS.com Learn SPSS: Raynald's SPSS Tools provides useful codes and techniques to increase productivity of all level of SPSS users. Raynald Levesque, the creator of the website, "wrote most of the 675+ sample syntax, macros and scripts included in this site...The site includes FAQ and Tips pages, a Newbie's Corner, links to free online SPSS Tutorials and more...There is also a section to support the book SPSS Programming and Data Management", which may be downloaded for free.
OTHER SOFTWARE PACKAGES
OpenEpi "provides statistics for counts and measurements in descriptive and analytic studies, stratified analysis with exact confidence limits, matched pair and person-time analysis, sample size and power calculations, random numbers, sensitivity, specificity and other evaluation statistics, R x C tables, chi-square for dose-response, and links to other useful sites. OpenEpi is free and open source software for epidemiologic statistics." CDC's Epi Info allows "epidemiologists and other public health and medical professionals [to] rapidly develop a questionnaire or form, customize the data entry process, and enter and analyze data. Epidemiologic statistics, tables, graphs, and maps are produced with simple commands such as READ, FREQ, LIST, TABLES, GRAPH, and MAP. Epi Map displays geographic maps with data from Epi Info." Epi Info can be used to perform basic epidemiologic functions like logistic regressions and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. "The WINPEPI (PEPI-for-Windows) computer programs for epidemiologists are designed for use in practice and research in the health field and as learning or teaching aids. They aim to complement other statistics packages. The programs are free, and can be downloaded from the Internet." Statpages.org contains over 600 links to pages with tutorials and information about statistics, including 380 pages that performal statistical calculations. "The web pages listed here comprise a powerful, conveniently-accessible, multi-platform statistical software package. There are also links to online statistics books, tutorials, downloadable software, and related resources. All of these resources are freely accessible." Freely Available Epidemiologic Software and Calculators (Handout by Dr. Madhukar Pai)
CANADA
Statistics Canada (http://www.statcan.ca) is Canada's national statistical agency. At their website, you can browse through statistics sorted by subject, find analytical studies and even look up national economic accounts.
USA
CDC Wonder "provides a single point of access to a wide variety of public health reports and data systems, both local and external." Reports and data systems are categorized by topics, but there is also an A-Z index for browsing. With CDC WONDER you can:
Access statistical research data published by CDC, as well as reference materials, reports and guidelines on health-related topics;
Query numeric data sets on CDC's computers, via "fill-in-the blank" web pages. Public-use data sets about mortality (deaths), cancer incidence, HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, vaccinations, natality (births), census data and many other topics are available for query, and the requested data are readily summarized and analyzed, with dynamically calculated statistics, charts and maps.
The Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program is a service of the (U.S.) National Cancer Institute's Surveillance Research Program. The SEER Program is a source of cancer statistics in the United States and can be accessed through their website. "SEER collects information on incidence, survival, and prevalence from specific geographic areas representing 26 percent of the US population and compiles reports on all of these plus cancer mortality for the entire US. This site is intended for anyone interested in US cancer statistics or cancer surveillance methods." The WWW Epidemiology Virtual Library is maintained by the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The WWW library provides a comprehensive catalogue of links to Epidemiology-related websites. They include links to health-related government agencies and international organizations around the world, health programs at various universitions, data sources, journals, publications, and the list goes on. The websites are sorted by subjects, country and type (University Sites, professional socities, etc). This library is a very good source of internet links to find out more about a specific epidemiology-related subject (like Diabetes links, or Occupational Epidemiology links, or links to sites on Infectious Diseases & AIDS).
As graduate students, many of you will succeed in publishing your research in a peer-reviewed journal - some of you are already familiar with this process. As you progress through your career you will likely be called upon to peer-review the research of other investigators.