{"id":5814,"date":"2020-02-23T20:16:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T01:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/?p=5814"},"modified":"2020-02-23T20:16:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T01:16:34","slug":"5-basics-of-consulting-success-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/5-basics-of-consulting-success-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Basics of Consulting Success: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week, I mentioned that successful consultants have five categories of skills;<\/a> communication, testing, statistics, programming and generalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COMMUNICATION <\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Communication is the number one most important skill. All five are necessary to some extent, but a terrific communicator with mediocre statistical analysis skills will get more business than a stellar statistician that can\u2019t communicate. Communication is a lot more than explaining results to clients or making small talk at meet ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documentation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Communication includes\ndocumentation, both in your code and internal documents such as codebooks or an\ninternal wiki. It includes letting clients know what you\u2019re going to do, what\nit\u2019s going to cost, what that cost includes, what were your results and what\nthose results mean. If you\u2019re good at communicating with clients, colleagues\nand your future self, you\u2019re half-way to success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An example of the\ncritical nature of communication can be found in the following retraction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The identified programming error was in a file used for preparation of the analytic data sets for statistical analysis and occurred while the variable referring to the study \u201carm\u201d (ie, group) assignment was recoded. The purpose of the recoding was to change the randomization assignment variable format of \u201c1, 2\u201d to a binary format of \u201c0, 1.\u201d However, the assignment was made incorrectly and resulted in a reversed coding of the study groups.\u201d<\/p>Aboumatar and Wise (2019, p. 1417)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Because of this incorrect coding, the reported results\nwere the exact opposite of what actually occurred. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Document coding!<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Here is an example from a current research project where\nthe CES-D depression scale was used, which requires several items to be\nreverse-coded before scoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the HTML file where the user enters data that\u2019s written\nto the database there is this comment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <h5 >I felt that I was just as good as other kids.<\/h5>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <! \u2013\u2013 This is reverse-coded. Don’t you dare change it. \u2013\u2013>
<div class=”row mb-3″>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <button id=”cesd4_1″ data-src=”3″ class=”cesd4 btn btn-light shadow-box col-5 my-3 mx-auto”>Not at all<\/button><\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the original\nfile to read in the data to SAS, there is a comment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*** NOTE: CESD IS ALREADY REVERSE-CODED. DOES NOT NEED CODING!;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

FILENAME REFFILE2 ‘\/home\/directory3\/data_analysis_examples\/crossroads\/cesd.xlsx’;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the internal wiki, there is this note:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tables in Acme Project Database<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

CESD – Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale – NOTE: The data are reverse coded at data entry. There is no need to reverse code these. There are 25 columns in this table; ID, username, session number, questions 1 through 20 of the CESD scale, the CESD total which is the sum of the 20 questions, named item21 for some odd reason, and a time stamp. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Document everything!\nDocument how are items coded, how subscales or totals are computed.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This may seem like overkill, but how many retractions could be prevented by this level of documentation? If you are a consultant, it\u2019s probable that at some point someone else will be looking at these data, or that you may be called back a year later to do a longitudinal analysis. Your colleagues and future you will thank you. A year or two from now, I don’t want to be looking at this data set and wondering if I need to reverse-code those items or if it was already done. I want to KNOW!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I deeply suspect that there are more erroneous results published due to incorrect coding of data than to incorrect analyses. After all, the peer reviewers, editors and readers see how you analyzed your data. No one sees how you coded it but you and, possibly, the person who has your position after you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the qualities necessary to be a successful statistical consultant, none is more important than communication, even if that communication is only with your future self. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-30-consulting-tips","category-dr-de-mars-general-life-ramblings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5815,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions\/5815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}