Overview
Statisticians and informaticists may be engaged throughout a research study, but after data collection is completed the efforts at data wrangling, analysis, summarization, and reporting become especially important. This is when it’s important to implement the statistical analysis plan, tabulate and visualize the data, deploy statistical inferences, and disseminate the results. Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design (BERD) faculty and staff ensure that this process is done correctly, and that the interpretation of the results is accurate. BERD can help get the research study across the finish line and get you prepared for the next phase of research.
The following requirements are necessary to be able to receive assistance from BERD for an ongoing study:
- Human or animal health related study topic.
- At least one of the key personnel on the study is a researcher with an appointment in a department of the UW School Medicine and Public Health or School of Veterinarian Medicine.
- The study is internally funded through UW-based grants, internal department funds, or researcher specific funds. Externally funded projects are expected to have had a statistician in the budget and presumably working on the project already. Some exceptions may be made if the external funding award is quite small.
- The required work by the assigned BERD statistician does not exceed a yearly effort of 5% FTE.
Expertise includes:
Analytic Methods
- Standard univariable comparisons (ANOVA, regression models, T-test, Chi-square test, etc.)
- Statistical model building
- Causal inference
- Machine learning and predictive modeling
- Bioinformatics
Study Designs
- Survey data analysis
- Epidemiology analysis
- Health services analysis
- Longitudinal and clustered data analysis
- Retrospective study analysis
- Survival analysis
- Biomarker development
Data Types
- Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics
- Spatial statistics
- Electronic Health Records
- Clinical trial endpoints
- Registry data
- Genomics: RNA-Seq, TCR-Seq, exome-Seq and related -omic data analysis
Services to assist with data analysis and manuscript preparation:
- Examination of data for outliers and overt data entry errors
- Analysis of data
- Table and Figure creation to visual results
- Manuscript writing for statistical methods and results section
- Response to manuscript reviewer comments
BERD biostatisticians and informaticists that consult and assist in the preparation of a manuscript at a level appropriate for co-authorship should be listed as a co-author on any manuscript submission for which their support was given. The CTSA grant from which UW ICTR was created must be acknowledged in any manuscript that received program support. The number of manuscripts that UW ICTR supports is key metric to show the impact of the CTSA grant on health-related research.
Specific examples of BERD analysis work include:
- Selection and implementation of appropriate statistical methodology
- Production of final study reports, including graphs and tables or other summaries suitable for presentation and publication
- Interpretation of statistical results
- Providing appropriate documentation and relevant literature