Page 38 - Recommendations-for-biostatisticians-in-managing-and-conducting-medical-research-consultations

7.2 To elicit feedback from research clients

It has become a norm to elicit a formal feedback from the research client, which can mostly
be recorded by using a short questionnaire in a Likert-scale format, and such feedback can
be compiled once every monthly, or every year (or in whatever time intervals deem
necessary). This practice usually ties in with a standard operating procedure (SOP) which
is set by an organization. However, this type of feedback elicited from the research clients
will usually consist of general comments even though it is still useful for assessing the
overall performance of the consultation service provided by the biostatistician. This e-
book/book recommends a different type of feedback to be elicited from the research
clients, by enquiring the research client whether the research proposal has been approved
for registration, whether the scientific paper has been accepted for publication, or any
other objective indicators for reporting and publishing medical research.

After a biostatistical consultation session, it is unknown whether the consultation
offered by a biostatistician has fulfilled the expectations of the research client. We never
know whether the research client will consult any other research consultant(s) after
having failed to achieve the objective(s) of a previous biostatistical consultation session.
Therefore, it is always worthwhile for the biostatistician to request the research client to
update him/her regarding whether or not the consultation session had fulfilled the
expectations of the research client. This can be done by sending an email to the research
clients to seek for an honest feedback from them. By doing so, the feedback elicited from
the research clients may also serve as a yardstick for measuring the efficiency of the
biostatistical consultation (i.e. whether the biostatistician has achieved the objective(s) of
the consultation.