Biostatistics Clinics
Monday-Friday Noon-1:15pm
Biostatistics Clinics are a free service staffed by the Department of Biostatistics open to all members of the Vanderbilt and Meharry communities who have methodologic questions about their research projects or about published articles.
How to reserve a spot:
- Email the clinic address as early as possible, but no later than 12 noon the day before you would like to attend. Clinic reservations are confirmed only after an email reply from one of our statisticians.
- In your subject line, include the day of the week and calendar date that you would like to attend, after consulting the days and themes listed below to find the most appropriate clinic. We have different teams of statisticians covering each day's clinic; including this information will direct your request to the people best able to sign you up.
- In your email, include your department/division, position, and a short paragraph about your project.
- Optional: you may upload data to the clinic computer (preferred; please see instructions below), or attach deidentified data to your email. We also have a projector available if you would like to bring a laptop; again, please ensure that data contains no PHI.
Clinic Tips and FAQs
- A maximum of two investigators can be served at each day's clinic.
- Mentors are required to attend with students and postdoctoral fellows; for anyone else working with a mentor or supervisor, based on past experience, we strongly encourage all team members to attend.
- Clinic begins at 12 noon and goes until 1:15pm. Please be on time, and email the clinic address as soon as possible if you will be late or need to cancel. Others may be on a wait list for your spot.
- Clinics held at Medical Center North (see locations below) will not be held if no investigators are signed up. Clinics held at 2525 West End will be held as open question time even if no investigators have signed up.
- We are not able to answer questions specific to software (eg, "how do I run a linear regression in SPSS?"). Our department primarily uses R, and if arranged ahead of time can possibly provide some help with Stata. While we are always happy to answer general statistical questions, we cannot provide support for SAS- or SPSS-specific questions.
- For more information, see tips for making the most of Biostatistics Clinic.
Topics and locations for each weekday
Preparing and uploading data for clinic
Advice
If you have a relatively simple dataset to be analyzed and the analysis can be concluded during the clinic, you can send your data at least two days in advance to
biostat-clinic@list.vanderbilt.edu and state which clinic date you would like to attend. Preferred formats are R save files, SPSS save files, Stata data files, and comma separated files (
csv
files) exported from a spreadsheet or other software, with variable names in the first record.
All subject identifiers must be removed from files before sending them to us (please see the
Data De-identification Checklist). Click
here for information about readying data for analysis.
To upload de-identified data files to the computer in the Dept. of Biostatistics main conference room at 2525 West End Avenue for the Thursday clinic, click
here .
To upload de-identified data files to the computer in the Dept. of Biostatistics conference room at D2221 Medical Center North, click
here .
Note: These upload tools are accessible only from Vanderbilt IP addresses. One must be on campus or connected via VPN to upload files. See
http://it.vanderbilt.edu/security/secure-communications/remote-access/ for more information about Vanderbilt's VPN services.
If you have any trouble uploading to the conference room computers please let us know by sending an email to
biostat-it@list.vanderbilt.edu. Try to include as much detail (error messages, screen shots, etc.) as you can.
Clinic personnel: Uploaded data files may be found in the 2525 conference room computer and in the D2221 MCN computer in the
clinicuploads
directory.
Article about Biostatistics Clinics in the Reporter
2012 article in the Reporter
- Department of Biostatistics
- Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (CTSA)
- Center for Health Services Research
- Tennessee Center for AIDS Research
Other Links