About us:
BSAC is a free biostatistics analysis service provided by MS and PhD students in Biostatistics within the Graduate Group in Epidemiology and Biostatistics (GGEB). Our mission is to provide accessible and high-quality statistical support to the Penn trainee community as well as provide opportunities for Biostatistics students to practice statistical collaboration and otherwise engage with the community. BSAC is made possible through support from GGEB and the Division of Biostatistics.
Who we serve:
BSAC is open to any student or trainee in the Penn biomedical community, including those in BGS, PSOM, or Penn Medicine for any statistical questions arising from research projects. Unfortunately, we are unable to directly provide support for faculty without full-time students at this time.
What you can expect from us:
Once you submit your intake form, we will contact you within two business days to connect you with a consultant and send this agreement as a document for you and your PI to review and sign. Projects will be assigned consultants based on current student availability. If more than two business days pass without a response, please email us at bsac.upenn@gmail.com.
Statistical consultation may include, but is not limited to questions about study design, data analysis, statistical programming, or interpretation of results. We are unable to provide hands-on data analysis support for projects requiring data cleaning or formatting.
Your consultant will guide the initial meeting to obtain necessary context in order to provide helpful advice. We recommend you come prepared with necessary materials to explain your question, including examples of the data you are working with, if relevant.
We promise to provide high-quality advice and analyses that is rigorous and statistically responsible. Analyses and analysis plans will be supervised by upper-year doctoral students who have completed required theoretical and applied statistics coursework, when such expertise is required. If questions come up that are outside of our knowledge, we promise to connect you with another student with the necessary expertise, or inform you so you can seek support elsewhere.
What time commitment to expect:
Since this is a free service where graduate students volunteer outside of their coursework and primary research responsibilities, support is limited to no more than two hours of meetings and three hours of active data analysis. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide support through BSAC for projects that are estimated to require more comprehensive analyses.
Support is limited to one analysis per project. Projects must be non-overlapping in scope.
What we expect from you:
Authorship is expected for any consultations where hands-on data analysis is required or extensive statistical guidance is given, since statistical expertise is a valuable intellectual contribution. This includes cases when the full time commitment is met by the consultant but additional analyses are required. We require that you and your PI discuss and mutually agree to this expectation before a consultant is assigned to your project.
As authors, we expect to read manuscript drafts before submission and are happy to assist with drafting of technical details and interpretation of statistical results, provided this falls within the time allotment for the project. We encourage you to reserve time for manuscript review and revisions for each project.
