Duke University School of Nursing Center for Nursing Research recently hosted its inaugural Summer Institute: Methods and Analytics for Symptom Science Research on July 19-20.

“The Institute was a huge success and equipped researchers and analysts with cutting-edge methods and analytics for moving symptom science forward,” says Wei Pan, PhD, associate professor at Duke University School of Nursing.

More than 60 researchers attended the inaugural Institute that supported symptom science researchers and analysts in their journey to explore advanced techniques for statistical modeling and data analysis. The two-day Institute taught innovative analytical techniques with illustrative studies to explore symptom prevalence, severity and changes across time.

“This year’s topic offered a wide variety of applications to various fields aligned with one of our Center for Nursing Research’s areas of excellence—Methods and Analytics: Optimizing the use of cutting-edge and underutilized approaches to study design and analytics,” said Pan, Lead for the Methods and Analytics Research Area of Excellence.

Nationally renowned experts presented studies that emphasized the most common patient-reported symptom experiences in subjects with heart failure, HIV/AIDS, breast cancer and childhood cancer.

“The inaugural institute’s presenters were leaders at nationally ranked schools around the nation, prominent researchers in the field of symptom science and have long time standing relationships with the National Institutes of Health where they know firsthand the priorities and advantages of symptom science research,” Pan said.

National and international attendees of the Institute can attest to the success of the event. Comments include “Excellent mix of presenting research design and analysis for symptom science,” “Really nice mix of information vs. deeper technical level information,” and “As an assistant professor in their fifth year, I’ve worked in symptom science since the early days in the PhD program and found the content right on—not too basic and not too advanced.”

“We learned from our attendees that researchers and analysts from various fields in health care have similar concerns in symptom science research,” says Pan. “We hope that the information they learned will help continue the discussion on new methodologies to apply to symptom science research.”

Stay tuned for information regarding next year’s Summer Institute!