Working Effectively With Biostatistics Analysis Center (BAC) Staff
This document provides some suggestions to facilitate communication between faculty investigators, biostatisticians and BAC staff with the goal of maintaining an efficient and collegial relationship.
- Communicate often, clearly, and with a plan
- Projects run more smoothly when there is frequent, clear, and focused
communication, which requires a strong commitment from faculty
investigators, faculty biostatisticians, and BAC staff.
- It is the BAC staff member's responsibility to update the investigator
regarding the requested analysis, but intervals between communications may
vary. You should ask for an update if you want to know something
sooner.
- Overall, if problems are perceived with individual BAC staff members,
please first attempt to communicate directly with the staff member before
contacting the BAC Managing Director (Amy Praestgaard).
- Clarify work expectations in advance
- The faculty biostatistician is often best positioned to understand
both investigator and BAC perspectives of task expectations, and is
expected to work with the investigator in prioritizing analyses.
- BAC staff vary in background. If your study requires particular
skills, such as programming in R, SPSS or Stata, we will try to find a
specific staff member to fulfill the particular need.
- Not all analyses are created equal. The BAC staff and faculty
biostatistician will try to keep the investigator apprised of the amount
of work or time it will take to perform specific analyses, striving to
communicate the implications of any analyses requested.
- Because the BAC is supposed to be revenue neutral, when work exceeds
the previously agreed scope of the project, some intervention may be
needed.
- Work from an analysis plan or to-do list
- The faculty investigator and biostatistician along with BAC staff need
to work together with a specific analysis plan. This plan targets the work
toward publication, and can be produced by any combination of the
investigator, faculty statistician, and BAC staff member(s). All parties
should retain a copy of the analysis plan regardless of who is responsible
for its development. Sometimes a plan can be as simple as an email
confirming the next steps in the analysis.
- To help the analysis run more smoothly, the analysis plan should
specifically describe all pertinent goals of the study. This will help the
BAC statistician understand where the study or paper is headed.
- All parties should leave any joint meeting with a clear idea of who is
responsible for each action item arising from that meeting. We recommend
circulating a written to-do list to all relevant members of the study
group. However, a verbal summary at the end of a meeting is sufficient, as
long as someone writes it down.
- Help provide adequate lead time
- The BAC staff member (and, perhaps, the BAC Managing Director) should
be informed as far in advance as possible of any deadlines requiring
analysis due to abstracts, grant renewals, or DSMB or external advisory
meetings.
- Last-minute requests are difficult for everyone and cannot always be
accommodated. For long-term projects with a number of investigators, it is
a good idea to create a rough project-specific calendar in advance, with
dates for grant deadlines, abstracts for papers, and the like.
