ASA Connect

I was preparing a talk for graduate students on writing research grants and in the process of searching for good online resources, I came across a UC Davis website that made my jaw drop. The document title is "Guidelines for Estimating Biostatistician Effort and Resources on Grants" and it is available in html or pdf format. I'm going to urge my boss at UMKC to prepare a similar document for our website, because I'm battling for 8% support instead of 5% support on grants.

I thought I'd ask what others think of the numbers listed in this document and whether their university has a similar document.

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Stephen Simon, blog.pmean.com
Independent Statistical Consultant
P. Mean Consulting
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Hi Dr. Simon,

Thanks for your post about the document my UC Davis colleagues and I wrote. We are looking forward to hearing from the larger community about the effort commitment guidelines we posted. As we said in the HTML version of the document, "It is based on the collective experience of faculty and staff biostatisticians in the UC Davis Division of Biostatistics. These guidelines should serve as a starting point for budget discussions." (The PDF version is longer and mentions additional external peers who contributed collective experience.)

Your experience of trying to convince collaborators to provide more than 5% support for statistical support on clinical trials was and still is a very familiar one to myself and my fellow UC Davis biostatisticians. This was a major motivation for the document. Another motivation was that we felt it was important to inform potential collaborators of the various roles and responsibilities that masters-level and doctoral-level statisticians fulfill on a project. In many cases, substantial effort is needed from two statisticians on the same project. So, while we are informing our collaborators that 5% probably isn't enough for the co-investigator providing statistical leadership, we also wanted to let them know that they should also include support for the workhorse statistician who takes on the substantial data analysis responsibilities for a typical clinical trial or observational study! You know, in case the collaborator thinks that 5% is enough to cover all of the statistical support required for a successful big study.

My colleagues and I still find ourselves involved in projects where the funded effort commitment ends up well short of the numbers we suggest as a starting point for budget discussions. Even in those cases, we (sometimes!) can make do.  We would be very curious to hear from our colleagues about what they think of the numbers we suggest and also about their experiences working with collaborators in budgeting for statistical support.





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Daniel Tancredi
Associate Professor
University of California, Davis
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2018 17:48
From: Stephen Simon
Subject: Have I been selling myself short on research grants?

I was preparing a talk for graduate students on writing research grants and in the process of searching for good online resources, I came across a UC Davis website that made my jaw drop. The document title is "Guidelines for Estimating Biostatistician Effort and Resources on Grants" and it is available in html or pdf format. I'm going to urge my boss at UMKC to prepare a similar document for our website, because I'm battling for 8% support instead of 5% support on grants.

I thought I'd ask what others think of the numbers listed in this document and whether their university has a similar document.

------------------------------
Stephen Simon, blog.pmean.com
Independent Statistical Consultant
P. Mean Consulting
------------------------------

Original Message------

Hi Dr. Simon,

Thanks for your post about the document my UC Davis colleagues and I wrote. We are looking forward to hearing from the larger community about the effort commitment guidelines we posted. As we said in the HTML version of the document, "It is based on the collective experience of faculty and staff biostatisticians in the UC Davis Division of Biostatistics. These guidelines should serve as a starting point for budget discussions." (The PDF version is longer and mentions additional external peers who contributed collective experience.)

Your experience of trying to convince collaborators to provide more than 5% support for statistical support on clinical trials was and still is a very familiar one to myself and my fellow UC Davis biostatisticians. This was a major motivation for the document. Another motivation was that we felt it was important to inform potential collaborators of the various roles and responsibilities that masters-level and doctoral-level statisticians fulfill on a project. In many cases, substantial effort is needed from two statisticians on the same project. So, while we are informing our collaborators that 5% probably isn't enough for the co-investigator providing statistical leadership, we also wanted to let them know that they should also include support for the workhorse statistician who takes on the substantial data analysis responsibilities for a typical clinical trial or observational study! You know, in case the collaborator thinks that 5% is enough to cover all of the statistical support required for a successful big study.

My colleagues and I still find ourselves involved in projects where the funded effort commitment ends up well short of the numbers we suggest as a starting point for budget discussions. Even in those cases, we can (sometimes!) can make do.  We would be very curious to hear from our colleagues about what they think of the numbers we suggest and also about their experiences working with collaborators in budgeting for statistical support.





------------------------------
Daniel Tancredi
Associate Professor
University of California, Davis
------------------------------