Page 14 - Recommendations-for-biostatisticians-in-managing-and-conducting-medical-research-consultations

3.1 First question: Please describe your study

This is the first most common approach to propose a new research idea whereby the
research client will initially describe his/her new research proposal with regard to its
study topic and its study objective(s). During this initial briefing, the research clients may
have introduced some new terminologies of the subject matter which are regarded as
technical jargons by the biostatistician. Such technical jargon (particularly involving
medical terminology) may pose difficulties for the biostatistician to comprehend. Hence,
the biostatistician should first seek to clarify with the research client the meaning of all
these medical terms used by the research client. After having done that, the biostatistician
can then begin to formulate an understanding of the background subject matter and also
the gather a preliminary idea of the proposed scope of the research study (including both
its breadth and depth) and also its study objective(s).

A common practice for the research client to adopt is to ensure that the biostatistician
must have acquired a basic understanding of the background subject matter prior to the
research consultation session by sending his/her full research proposal to the
biostatistician for a preliminary perusal. This is to enable the biostatistician to obtain an
initial brief overview of the research proposal by doing some preparatory work such as
reading through the introduction section and conducting a literature review of the subject
before the consultation session. However, this approach will only be useful for a
biostatistician if the background information in the “introduction” section and the
literature review that is conducted for the research proposal have been well-written, along
with the consideration of as many research hypotheses as possible. Otherwise, it can pose a
serious challenge to a biostatistician when he/she is trying to understand the proposed
research topic by conducting a preliminary review of the research proposal.

Despite this, it has been commonly seen that those research clients who are requesting
for a biostatistical consultation service are usually undergraduate or postgraduate students
with little or no prior experience in medical research. Therefore, it would not be realistic
for a biostatistician to expect an initial draft of the research proposal to be accurately
written. For those undergraduate or postgraduate students having little or no prior
experience in medical research, one possible way to get around this problem is to meet
face-to-face with the biostatistician to enable both parties to obtain a preliminary overview
of a research proposal, an approach which some postgraduate students seem to prefer.