Statistical Services

Statistical analysis is not necessarily a simple process. Ongoing support may take days, weeks, or even months depending on the magnitude of the project and the competing demands on the biostatistician. An efficient statistical analysis will depend on how well defined your research question is, the data collection process, and how well the database has been prepared.

The following links provide advice on what you can do yourself before meeting with a biostatistician:

• StatsDirect statistical help
• UCLA statistical computing
• Laerd statistics
• Cochrane handbook
• BMJ Publishing
• BMJ Statistical notes
• Calculators
• Data Cleaning

Should the biostatistician be an author on your paper or just be acknowledged?

Statistical support can range from short discussions to fuller collaborations involving the statistician undertaking data management, analysis and providing results. Authorship confers credit, responsibility and accountability for published work. Authorship of a manuscript for biostatisticians is appropriate when the biostatistician has contributed to the work described in the manuscript, including undertaking analysis, writing a statistical methods section, providing statistical results, or reviewing it for correctness. This decision should be made with reference to the formal authorship guidelines provided by the NHMRC and ICMJE. Authorship questions should be discussed early in the project so that expectations are clear and revisited at any time if the scope of work changes.

All data analysis related projects require evidence of ethics approval prior to sharing de-identified data with QIMR statistician, except projects on prospective research grants and research protocols (e.g. involving advice on sample size calculations and expected statistical analyses) where no data has been collected yet.

As is appropriate for conditions of ethics and governance approvals, identified data should not be made available to statisticians and will not be accepted by the service. Please refer to the guidelines below to de-identify your data and securely send to the biostatistician in a manner consistent with legislated privacy requirements. Data can be sent securely via QDOCs, QIMR Berghofer's document sharing service. Data must not be sent via email unless instructed by the statistician, and then only via a work or university email address.

Data Guidelines

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare:

• CSIRO

• Queensland Health

Statistical methods are an integral part of most scientific research activities.  Everyone from research students to senior researchers will benefit from establishing an amicable working relationship with statistics. Available training programs are advertised on the Institute’s events page. Additional resources including statistical guides and video tutorials are available below.

1. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 1 – Introduction, Basics, Data Types, Functions
2. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 2 – Getting Help, Packages and Libraries, Directories
3. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 3 – Importing, Visualising and Knowing Your Data
4. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 4 – Data Cleaning and Preparation
5. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 5 – Merging Datasets
6. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 6 – Pivoting Datasets
7. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 7 – Exporting Data, Saving Figures and Workspaces
8. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 8 – Basic Analysis – Categorical Data
9. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 9 – Basic Analysis – Continuous Data
10. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 10 – Basic Analysis – Survival Analysis
11. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 11 – Conditional Statements Logic and Loops
12. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 12 – Quick Alternatives to Loops
13. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 13 – Tidyverse Verbs of Data Wrangling
14. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 14 – Tidyverse – Analysis
15. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 15 – Tidyverse – Pipes
16. Introduction to R Workshop Series: Video 16 – The Basics of ggplot

1. Descriptive Statistics in SPSS
2. Data Entry and Cleaning in Excel