FAQ: Statistical Consulting
On this page you find general information about the statistical consulting of fu:stat. If your questions are not answered here, feel free to contact us!
- Please previously prepare your research questions before attending the consulting
- If at all possible, please, bring two (or more) studies published in high-ranking journals (from the perspective of their discipline) that have at least an comparable experimental setup or study design. It should be noted, that it should not necessarily contain a similar research question. Please bring your questions related to these articles.
- If at all possible, please, bring documents relating to previous studies (questionnaires, experimental setups, etc.).
- If at all possible, please, bring previous analysis already found, your dataset and if you want your own laptop.
- For a consulting, we need a completed registration form. In particular, the indication of your supervisor and department are necessary. Additionally, we have to ensure that the supervisor is informed and agrees with the consultancy by fu:stat
- Within 10 days one of our team members will get in touch with you to make an appointment and possibly request further information.
- In total an appointment takes approximately one hour.
- The first 10-20 minutes are usually needed to clarify the research project. In the process we try to understand (independent of already performed analysis) what the hypothesis, which should be evaluated by statistical methods, are.
- The remaining time we use to answer questions and or clarify the research plan.
- It may always happen that some rework has to be done, in other words the consulting may be halted at a certain point and you will be assigned some “homework” together with a new appointment.
- Also it may always happen that we are not familiar with certain methods or need to confer with other consultants. In this case, typically a new appointment is made as well.
- We help you to clarify or resolve existing questions concerning the statistical analyses.
- We help you to plan your research study (study design, survey design, questionnaire construction, analysis method, results interpretation, presentation and consolidation).
- We help you with the interpretation of the statistical analyzes.
- In case of a thesis work, we assist you by the choice and realization of statistical methods. However, we do not perform the implementation ourselves.
- We do not assume authorship. We provide references to support our claims.
- In principle, we consult all students and employees of the Freie Universität Berlin
- A free consultancy is only possible for students and employees of the Freie Universität Berlin.
- Depending on capacity and workload, we offer fee-based consultancies for externals. For this purpose, we submit an offer taking into account our hourly rates (different for student employees, scientific employees with no doctorate, postdoctoral employees and professors) and the scope of services. The costs are comparable to those of commercial suppliers