Page 11 - Recommendations-for-biostatisticians-in-managing-and-conducting-medical-research-consultations

his/her supervisor or methodologist or epidemiologist. However, a biostatistician should
also be well-versed in these areas because some of these skills such as “To verify the
suitability of subject selection” and “To evaluate the suitability of
instruments/questionnaires” are also related to the study objectives and will therefore
impinge on the statistical analysis. The necessary skills for determining the validity and
appropriateness of a research design and its methodology are usually not taught in
undergraduate courses in statistics (or even in some postgraduate courses in statistics). A
postgraduate course in medical statistics or biostatistics will commonly include some of the
important taught modules such as selection of a suitable study design, sample size
planning, etc. However, these taught modules in statistics by themselves may not be
sufficient for enabling a biostatistician to provide consultation on the selection of a suitable
research design for a particular research proposal in real-life scenarios.

Table 1: Scope of core competencies and skills for a competent biostatistician.