Students and teachers of biometrics and applied statistics in agriculture and livestock have long faced a shortage of case studies and datasets suited to African settings.

Version 2 of the Biometrics and Research Methods Teaching Resource provides 17 case studies (each with its own Excel data sets) prepared by students, lecturers and researchers at the University of Nairobi, University of Swaziland, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Islamic University of Uganda and ILRI).

Each case study follows the typical stages in a research process:

1. Research strategy (deciding research objectives; choosing the type of study)
2. Study design (planning the study; accounting for variation; sampling; designing an experiment; designing a survey).
3. Data management (collecting data; organising data; storing data)
4. Data exploration (looking at data; describing data; formulating statistical models).
5. Data analysis (modelling data; handling variation; applying different statistical techniques – analysis of variance, regression analysis, general linear models).
6. Reporting (interpreting and presenting results; communicating research results).

Six teaching modules complement the cases and provide additional teaching and learning material of a practical nature.
In this second version, users can be linked directly to subjects of interest. The presentation and description of data sets has improved and GenStat dialog boxes now appear within the case studies. The Teaching Resource relies on the statistical package GenStat (two case studies also demonstrate the use of R), which can readily be downloaded with a ’Discovery’ version free for not-for-profit users in sub-Saharan Africa.

To make the resource more usable by teachers and students, this version will include both a zipped website version for those with intermittent internet connections so they can download the CD and separate pdf documents.

View the Teaching Resource online at https://www.ilri.org/biometrics

A CD version of the Resource is available on request from ILRI (contact a.m.odanga@cgiar.org)

The Teaching resource was funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

View an interview with John Rowlands on the resource: