Course Description

Listen, Read, and Learn

Course Overview

Course Format: Online

Contact Hours: 3.75 contact hours

State Approval: AOPT courses are accepted in all states plus the District of Columbia, as allowed by the type of course requirements in state regulations. A small number of states require APTA to seek pre-approval of courses. The approval codes for these states can be found here. Always check with your State Licensing Board to confirm contact hours offered.

Course Objectives

• Be able to evaluate the hierarchy of levels of evidence when interpreting the strength of research findings in physical therapy.
• Understand the role of statistics and hypothesis testing in evaluating research findings.
• Understand the most common research designs used in studies in physical therapy
• Be able to distinguish between reliability and validity and their importance in interpreting research.
• Be able to differentiate between statistical tests of relationships and also tests of differences when interpreting the literature in physical therapy.
• Have an appreciation of the importance of common measures such as minimal clinically important difference, diagnostic testing and accuracy, and receiver operating characteristic curves.

Topics and Authors

• Peter Coyle, PT, DPT, PhD