Issues to consider when planning your research or analyzing your data

We often find that our work in consulting is aided if the client has considered certain issues before their first meeting with us. The following general ideas are useful to review before planning your research or before analyzing your data. In the next few weeks, we will add a discussion of all questions below, and add other questions.

General Issues

• What is the scientific question of interest?
• Do you plan to perform exploratory analyses, confirmatory analyses, or both?

The Consulting Process

• Comments about statistical consulting from Brian Yandell at the University of Wisconsin.

Issues in the Design and Analysis of Experiments

• What is the experimental unit in your experiment?
• Will you have a priori contrasts to test?
• Will you use post hoc (multiple comparison) tests?
• Do you have unbalanced data?

Issues in the Design and Analysis of Surveys

• Are you planning to do a survey or a census?
• Have you budgeted the neccesary resources to minimize nonresponse?

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