FAQs

The services we provide include, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Assistance in formulation of research questions to which statistical methods are applicable.
• Planning at the sampling or data collection phase of a study.
• Advice on statistical methods and statistical software.
• Data analysis and/or explanation of analysis results.
• Assistance in writing up results and/or preparing for a presentation.
• Statistical support for clinical trials.
• Statistical seminars on a particular statistical topic (to NKU students/faculty only).
• Mathematical modelling (typically “farmed out” to Mathematics faculty within the Department) 

We do not provide tutoring for courses.  Additionally, we do not provide manuscript writing (beyond our standard report) for students when the consultation relates directly to their degree; our assistance to students may be further limited based on the preferences of their advisor/mentor when such a request is made in writing to the director of the center.  

We accept requests from students, faculty, and staff of NKU. We also accept requests from businesses and other entities in the Northern Kentucky region and beyond. To make a request, navigate to the Request Our Services link and fill out our consultation request form. The more information you are able to provide, the better we will likely to be able to assist you.

While many faculty and students at NKU have some training in statistics, we find that most projects can benefit from a thorough review by a professional statistician. We can provide a brief review of your study design and/or analysis plans. We can often make suggestions that may help improve your statistical technique and also your chances of publication. And because the first consultation is free, there is often no charge for this review!

No, we do not. Please refer to /content/inside/plus/tutoring.html for tutoring services for STA 113, 205, 212, or 250 (as well as many MAT courses).

We can provide an EXCEL template tailored to a study into which data may be recorded.  This often can save time when it comes to the statistical analysis.  Typically, we can also provide the SAS programming skills necessary to take messy data and clean it up for analyses.

The BCC can provide data entry services, however this would not be done in the context of an initial meeting. We also provide support for online survey collection using Qualtrics. As mentioned above, we can also design an Excel template to help you with data entry.  In fact we encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to save data management time later. We will set up the format for the file, type in column headings, and provide data entry safeguards to minimize typos. Also, during analysis we will do the best we can to check for data entry errors. But please realize that there may be mistakes that we cannot possibly detect, so it is important for you to verify your data entry.

Currently, the BCC is closed to in-person visitors and all business is being conducted remotely.  Please fill out the request form and we will be in touch to set up a Zoom session.

Normally, we are open Tuesday - Friday during the academic year when classes are in session (late August through early May).  We are not be open during NKU breaks, although we typically try to at least keep up with e-mail communications during those times. During the summer sessions we are usually open part-time (by appointment) and will do the best we can to accommodate you. 

At this time, due to COVID-19, we do not.  The only way to get started on your project is to fill out the request form below.  

Normally, because our schedules are varied, most of our work with clients is by appointment. You are welcome to drop by (or call) unannounced but should be aware that we may not be able to provide immediate assistance unless all you need is some quick advice. Clients with projects new to the center are always expected to fill out the consultation request form.

Recently we have been able to take all projects that have fallen within the scope of the center.  However, this cannot be guaranteed.  Due to staff limitations and/or demand, there may be times when we must instead offer clients a position in the wait-list. Projects deemed to be outside the scope of our services will be declined.

Yes.  Initial consultations are free.  All other services incur a charge of $20/hour for students, $35/hour for faculty/staff/departments, and $50/hour for all others.  At the initial meeting, we can usually provide an estimate of how much time a project is likely to involve.

After we receive your request for a consultation, you will generally be contacted by email or phone within 1-3 business days (if you don’t, please feel free to send a follow-up email to bcc@nku.edu). If your request falls within the scope of BCC services, we may do one or more of the following depending on its complexity:

• Begin handling your request by email/phone (if it is simple).
• Schedule an initial consultation meeting to discuss your project (if the request is complex or we will be substantially involved in the analysis).
• Assign the project to a consulting team generally consisting of a student consultant and a faculty mentor. Both generally play key roles in a project.
• Postpone consultation because of time constraints and place you on a waiting list if desired. 

If the request is outside the scope of the center or if current staffing has insufficient expertise in the requested area, we will decline the consultation. If possible we will try to refer you to someone else on campus who might be able to help.

Seminars are provided on a case-by-case basis and only as our time permits.  At least one month of lead time is necessary when requesting a seminar. Please contact Dr. Nolan directly at nolanj1@nku.edu.

The length varies, but typically ranges from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. The initial consultation is free of charge (note that if project work occurs during the same session, this will be billed). Eventual consulting on the project is $20/hour for students, $35/hour for faculty/staff/departments, and $50/hour for all others.  For large projects, please speak with the director during your initial meeting regarding potential discounts.  

Ideally prior to the initial meeting, please provide us with as much information as you can regarding your project. Much of this should be given when you fill out the service request form. If you have preliminary ideas on how you will collect data, it is useful for us to hear about those before the meeting. Or if you already have data, it can also be useful for us to have seen that prior to the initial meeting (please make sure to remove personal identifiers before sending it to us). 

At the initial meeting, our goals will be to identify your research goals and the ways in which we can help you meet them. It will help if you are prepared to:

• Briefly describe your problem
• Discuss your research goals (what questions do you hope to answer?)
• Discuss variables that you plan to measure and analyze
• Discuss your progress with the project to date
• Determine what types of assistance we may be able to provide. 

Most importantly, please feel free to ask a lot of questions! If you don’t understand something, please ask. We will do the same of you. We are not experts in your field, so we may need to ask you several questions in order to understand the project.

 

If we are able to accept your project, we’ll continue to work on it (see “how is my request for services followed up”) and will be in frequent communication with you regarding that work. As work progresses, we may schedule additional meetings as needed for clarification and/or explanation of results.

Let us know what change(s) you have made, however small they seem to be. You can do that with a simple email message. Even the smallest modification can lead to a major change in the way your data should be collected. We may be able to handle the modifications through e-mail, or perhaps we will need to schedule an additional meeting. If you change your research topic completely, please fill out another consultation request form on our website and we will treat it as a new project.

It can be a substantial time (and cost) saver if your data is submitted in a ready-to-analyze form. In most situations this means a single Excel spreadsheet in which columns represent variables to be analyzed and rows represent single observations. We can assist you in developing the form of the spreadsheet.  We can also design the spreadsheet to help ensure the accuracy of your data.

This varies substantially from client to client. It depends on the complexity of the analysis, how many projects we are working on at the same time, how clean your data are (i.e., free of data entry errors), and how many consultants we have working in the BCC at that time. Generally speaking please allow up to 6 weeks (exclusive of university breaks) from initial request to the point in time at which you need things to be done.  We'll do things more quickly than that when we can.

This depends in large part on the nature of your request. Often, a report including the results is created (typically in a Microsoft Word document) and e-mailed to you as an attachment. It is typical for us to give you more analysis than you will actually need to include in a manuscript. In addition to the analysis, we will try to provide you with a description of the methods used and some details of the statistical interpretation. It will be up to you to decide what parts are most relevant and interesting. 

Generally, yes – we are happy to assist in writing the statistical parts of a manuscript for submission to a journal.  When we do so, this is generally done off the clock by the faculty member, and co-authorship is expected. A note for graduate students: we typically will not assist in writing of a thesis or dissertation (beyond the report described above) unless your faculty research coordinator gives us expressed permission to do so.

We will certainly do that by request. We can set up another face-to-face meeting (or phone conference) to go over the results. We can also answer questions by email.  Of course we do have to invoice for this time.

Sometimes after you have a chance to think about the analysis and results, you may find that you have additional questions or you would like additional analyses. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions. All of the faculty members who work in the BCC are also teachers, so we are used to answering such questions, and we really enjoy this "teaching" aspect of the consultation process. Please feel free to contact us. We are happy to help.

To varying degrees, we support SAS, Minitab, SPSS, StatCrunch, and R.  It is also typical to use EXCEL to collect and contain the data.  We try to accommodate the preferences of a client when it is reasonable to do so.  However, we also often recommend a particular software according to the analyses that are needed. 

It is important to properly acknowledge the contributions of the BCC when you publish your work.  Please refer to our final report, which will contain a section on the last page regarding how best to provide this acknowledgment.

The BCC serves as an important training ground for our students to gain experience in statistical consulting. Students always work under the guidance of a faculty mentor in order to ensure quality of work. That faculty mentor will have carefully reviewed the analysis and final report before it is sent. 

Because there are a limited number of openings for which some experience in statistics is required, the application process is competitive.  The position is designed for seniors majoring in statistics and/or mathematics.  The minimum qualification to become a student consultant is to have completed at least two of our applied statistics courses at the 300 level.  The main call for applications is typically around spring break.  As needed, applications for Spring may be solicited in October. Students are chosen based on their application materials and an interview process. Contact Dr. Nolan (nolanj1@nku.edu) for further information.