Statistical Consulting Services
Statistical consulting services for current VCU faculty, staff and students are provided by appointment by graduate students from VCU Department of Biostatistics and by graduate students and faculty from VCU Statistical Sciences & Operations Research.
- Two Levels of Consulting Services
- Consulting Appointments
- What We Can’t Do
- Co-Authorship and Acknowledgement
- Statistical & Research Resources
Two Levels of Consulting Services Are Provided:
- Free Services
The goals of our free statistical consulting services are to provide:
- Current VCU faculty, staff and students with the statistical advice and technological know-how so that you may independently analyze your data.
- Support for you to do your own research work; it is not our goal to do your research for you or provide free tutoring.
- Information about available analytical and instructional resources.
- Direction in and understanding of your statistical analyses and the software in which you are working.
- Each currently enrolled VCU student is offered 4 hours of no charge consulting per semester.
Additional time may be requested by the student’s adviser by email. - Each VCU faculty/staff member is offered 4 hours of no charge consulting per project.
- If you "No Show" for an appointment, it counts as a 1 hour visit.
- We can suggest various analyses which can be performed on your data, as well as give the pros/cons. The decision on which to use is up to you (or you and your advisor/dissertation committee).
- Study and experiment design
- Statistical planning for grant writing
- Selection of Statistical Software
- Data Collection and Data Management Strategies
- Power Analysis / Sample Size Determination
- Choice of Appropriate Statistical Methods
- Understanding Your Statistical Analysis
- Interpreting Your Results
- Statistical Software Installation / Upgrade Support
- Fee Based Services
The following services may be provided on a fee for service basis:- Write program code for you
- Analyze data for you
- Provide one-on-one tutoring in statistics and/or software packages
Financial arrangements are negotiated between the client and the consultant.
To request fee based services email statconsult@vcu.edu
Consulting Appointments:
- To request an appointment
- Consulting is available by appointment only.
- Consultation often requires multiple appointments.
- Appointments are available on a first come, first served basis.
- During peak times, it may take 1-3 weeks to get an appointment.
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Consulting Schedule |
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Day |
Cabell B9 |
Sanger B1-018L |
Harris 4123 |
| Monday | 9:15 am - 2:45 pm | ||
| Tuesday | 9:00 am - 12:30 pm |
9:15 am - 2:45 pm 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm |
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| Wednesday | 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm | 9:00 am - 12:30 pm | |
What We Can’t Do:
- Do Your Homework For You
Please see your professor or TA for coursework help.
- Turn Back the Clock
- Data analysis often takes longer than people often plan for.
- To ensure you meet your deadlines, start early and set aside sufficient time to prepare your grant request or analyze your data.
Co-Authorship and Acknowledgement:
If the Statistical Consultant contributes in any substantial way to a publication, with advice, planning, or analysis, then he or she is entitled to be a co‐author (if their material is being used), and in that case the statistical consultant also has a responsibility for the publication as a whole as outlined in the JAMA criteria.
Otherwise a statement of acknowledgement similar to the following may be appropriate:
"The Statistical Consulting Service at Virginia Commonwealth University and in particular [name the consultant] assisted with the design and analysis of this experiment [or study or project]."
Articles: Please send copies of all articles that recognize the Statistical Consulting Service at Virginia Commonwealth University to statconsult@vcu.edu
Statistical & Research Resources
- Software at VCU
- Working with Sensitive Data
- When working with sensitive data, it is your responsibility to ensure that the data is secured during collection, transmission and storage.
VCU Encryption Security Standard - sections III-V - Research Data Security Overview
- What is sensitive data?
VCU Data Classification Standard - How do I collect and store sensitive data?
- Unless stored on University centrally managed or comparable network storage devices, all Category I data must be encrypted when stored in electronic format.
- Secured central storage for sensitive research data is available on:
- All fixed storage devices on University owned laptop computers must be encrypted with the VCU enterprise encryption solution.
- REDCap provides secured web data collection forms and secured web surveys
- See VCU Encryption Security Standard - section IV
- How can I safely transmit sensitive data?
- By Gmail: How to send encrypted mail from Google Apps (Faculty/Staff)
- By Lotus email: Use Zixmail Secure Email
- For file transfers: Eestablish a VPN connection and then use an SFTP program such as SFTP or Filezilla
- Securing mobile devices
- See VCU Encryption Security Standard - section V
- VCU Office of Research
- CITI Training
- NIH: Protecting Personal Health Information in Research:
Understanding the HIPAA Privacy Rule
- When working with sensitive data, it is your responsibility to ensure that the data is secured during collection, transmission and storage.
- VCU Resources for Researchers
- VCU Biostatistical Consulting Lab
- VCU CARMA- Center for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis
- VCU Center for Biological Complexity
- VCU Center for Clinical and Translational Research
- VCU Office of Research
- VCU SERL- Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory
- Technology Services Research Servers
- RDataStorage - Windows storage for sensitve data
- App2Go - Windows server with research applications
- Unix servers for research
- Other Resources
