Frequently Asked Questions about our Statistical Consulting Services

The goal of the UCLA ATS Statistical Consulting Group is to help UCLA faculty, staff, and graduate students perform top-notch research, with the greatest emphasis on data analysis related to grants and publications, but also including dissertation research. We provide advice and resources to enable you to develop and/or extend your statistical computing skills, helping you to independently use common statistical packages for the analysis of research data.

What resources do you offer for help? We offer these resources to help you.

• Our web site at http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat
• Over 60 online classes and workshops
• Email consulting by writing
• Walk-in consulting in Math Sciences 4919.  See our online schedule for days and hours.
• Stat Books for Loan  available during consulting hours.

How do the web pages relate to walk-in consulting? There is a feedback loop between our web pages and our walk-in consulting.  When we see certain questions or themes of questions arise in consulting, it is a way of telling us that we need to have web pages that go into detail on such topics. We find that clients frequently consult our web pages and then ask us more challenging and sophisticated questions since they have already used the web to answer many of their questions.

Can you give examples of the kind of help you offer? When you are performing your research and you hit a road block, we can help you learn what you need to know to get past the road block and keep your research moving forward, or we can help you plan to avoid some road blocks later on in the research process.  We can make suggestions about how you might want to collect or input your data to help with your analysis.  We can show you the basic syntax to get you started with your analysis and give a basic explanation of the output, and give you references to books or manuals which can help you gain a greater mastery of the commands and understanding of the analysis and the output. We can help you understand your output, suggest further analyses to help clarify your results, and suggest references which provide more comprehensive information.

Can I get help with dissertation or other graduate level research? While grants and publications are very high priority for us, we gladly advise students working on their dissertation. We encounter many students who are not  well versed in using statistical packages when they start their analyses, so we strongly encourage all graduate students to start learning SAS, Stata and SPSS (e.g., via our classes) early in their graduate career because it takes weeks and months of hands on usage to get a working knowledge of SAS, Stata or SPSS.

What if I have specific questions about my dissertation?  We can help you implement strategies which your advisor/committee has approved.  The emphasis is on implementation.  For example, if your committee suggests that you perform a certain analysis, we can advise you on how to perform that analysis in SAS, Stata, or SPSS (or whatever package) or we can help you understand the output of the analysis.  However, it is not appropriate for ATS consultants to provide the kind of advice which should come from your chairperson or committee members.

What kinds of assistance are inappropriate? Our goal is to help as many UCLA researchers as possible.  Although there is a large gray area demarcating activities that are clearly appropriate from those that are clearly inappropriate, it is generally not proper (or possible) for a consultant to:

• Write programs to perform your data management for you. We can suggest strategies, show you example programs, or outline programs for you, but we cannot write the programs for you.
• Make decisions about how you should analyze your data.  We can suggest the various analyses which can be performed on your data, the pros and cons of the analyses, but it is up to you (or you and your advisor/dissertation committee) to decide what analyses you should use.
• Perform data analysis for you.
• Solve very difficult problems to meet imminent deadlines.  We strongly recommend allocating enough time for your data analysis. Despite our years of experience, we simply cannot solve two months worth of work in 30 minutes. We can sympathize with you, but cannot solve such problems.
• Help you with your coursework. The best person to help you with your coursework is your Teaching Assistant and/or your Professor.  Since we are not aware of the teaching goals of your TA or Professor, our assistance may be misleading or counterproductive.  Also, your TA, Professor, and/or classmates may feel that obtaining our assistance may be unfair to those who are not helped.
• Teach you SAS, Stata or SPSS. On our web site you can see the SAS Starter Kit, SPSS Starter Kit, and Stata Starter Kit pages for learning SAS, Stata or SPSS.

If I visit you, will my analysis take less time? No, generally not. While we might point out some time saving techniques, these are often offset by recommendations that take additional time like testing assumptions, thoroughly checking and documenting your data, or exploring other analysis possibilities. We often find that people underestimate the amount of time it takes for their data analysis since there can be many unexpected tasks that take additional time.

Additional Resources

Are you the only group that offers this kind of help on campus? While we are the only group that offers free year round statistical consulting geared towards researchers on the entire campus, there are other groups that offer related  services that compliment our services.  The Statistical Biomathematical Consulting Clinic and Paid Statistical Consulting via the UCLA Statistics Department offer fee for service consulting services.  Also, the UCLA Biostatistics Department offers Free Statistical Consulting, but we believe this is only available when class is in session. 

 Do you teach statistics? We focus on answering questions on how to analyze data using statistical software.  If you need help understanding statistics, perhaps you might want to check out the Statistics Tutors within the UCLA Statistics Department , take a statistics class, or ask us for our list of  consultants and tutors available for hire.

What if I need to hire a statistician? What if I need to hire a statistics tutor? We have a list of consultants and tutors available for hire that we can print and provide to you.

Are there labs on campus where I can do my statistical computing? Yes.  The CLICC has computers with SAS, Stata, SPSS, SUDAAN, MLwiN, Mplus, and more.  All you need is a Bruin Online account and you can stop by and login.  Also see the UCLA Campus Computer Labs for links to a number of labs on campus. 

Can you help me get statistical software? Software Central (another group within ATS) has worked to arrange discounted pricing for many of the statistical packages we use (including SAS, Stata, SPSS, Stat/Transfer, and SUDAAN).

I am a Professor (or I am a TA). Can you help me teach statistics? Yes.  You are welcome to use any of the materials from our web site for non-commercial purposes.  In addition, our Resources for Teaching Statistics seminar has numerous resources within our site and from other sites around the world. We also welcome you to our consulting and we can talk with you and see how we may be able to assist or possibly collaborate. If you need a lab for teaching hands on classes, you might check with the CLICC Lab .

Can I use your web pages for my teaching? The short answer is yes, you may use, copy, or adapt our pages for your use as long as the use is educational and non-commercial. See our copyright statement for more details.

Can you teach me how to use my computer? Unfortunately we cannot.  But the CLICC has workshops on topics like Access, Excel, Photoshop, html, Word, and more! Also, University Extension has even more detailed classes on computer related topics.

Can you help me with GIS Software? See http://www.ats.ucla.edu/portal/research_activities/gis/default.htm for information and resources regarding GIS.

Do you know how I can access online books, journals, and statistical papers? If you visit our Statistics Books for Loan and Downloadable Books, there are a number of statistics books that are available for download (many requiring that you connect via a UCLA IP address).  Also, we have links to a number of Statistics Papers for Download.  Many of these journals are available because of licenses purchased by the UCLA library and the StatsNetBase books are via UC wide license.

---

Who are you?

We are a team of six UCLA staff members devoted to helping to UCLA researchers with statistical computing.  Because we are staff members, we are constantly work to expand our skills by taking classes, reading books, and exploring statistical packages so we can provide the best help that we can. All of our services are 100% free to students, staff, faculty, and other members of the UCLA community.  You can learn more about us from our consultants page.

What kind of help do you offer?

Our goal is to provide you information to help you analyze your data using common statistical packages to advance your research.  We do this via our web site, classes and seminars, email consulting, and walk in consulting.

When you are performing your research and you hit a road block, we can help teach you what you need to know to get past the road block and keep your research moving forward, or we can help you plan to avoid some road blocks later on in the research process.  We can make suggestions about how you might want to collect or input your data to help with your analysis.  We can show you the basic syntax to get you started with your analysis and give a basic explanation of the output, and give you references to books or manuals which can help you with greater mastery of the commands and of understanding the analysis and the output. We can help you understand your output, suggest further analyses to help clarify your results, and suggest references which provide more comprehensive information. All of our services are 100% free to students, staff, faculty, and other members of the UCLA community.

Can I get help with dissertation or other graduate level research?

Yes, we strive to help by providing resources to help students learn the statistical packages for their analyses and offering help for specific questions.  We strongly encourage all graduate students to take our SAS, Stata or SPSS classes and seminars early in their graduate career to prepare for their data analysis.  It takes weeks and months of hands on usage to get a working knowledge of SAS, Stata or SPSS for analyzing your data and we encourage students to attend these classes and seminars to help learn these packages.

What if you have questions specific to your dissertation?  We can help you implement strategies which your advisor/committee have approved.  The emphasis is on implementation.  For example, if your committee suggests that you perform a certain analysis, we can advise you on how to perform that analysis in SAS, Stata, SPSS (or whatever package) or we can help you understand the output of the analysis.  But, it is not appropriate for ATS consultants to provide the kind of advice which should come from your chairperson or committee.

What sorts of assistance are inappropriate?

Our goal is to help as many UCLA researchers as possible.  Although there is a large gray area demarcating activities that are clearly appropriate from those that are clearly inappropriate, it is generally not proper (or possible) for a consultant to:

• Write programs to perform your data management for you (we can suggest strategies, show you example programs, or outline programs for you, but we cannot write the programs for you).
• Make decisions about how you should analyze your data.  We can suggest the various analyses which can be performed on your data, the pros and cons of the analyses, but it is up to you (or you and your advisor/dissertation committee) to decide what analyses you should use.
• Perform data analysis for you.
• Solve very difficult problems to meet imminent deadlines.  Research problems usually take days, weeks, or months to solve so come for help early before your deadline.  We want to help, but we simply cannot solve 2 months worth of work in 30 minutes.
• Help you with your coursework -- the best person to help you with your coursework is your Teaching Assistant and/or your Professor.  Since we are not aware of the teaching goals of your TA or Professor, our assistance may be misleading or counterproductive.  Also, your TA, Professor, and/or classmates may feel that obtaining our assistance may be unfair to those who are not helped.

There are other groups on campus that do offer programming and data analysis services -- see the next question.

Are you the only group that offers this kind of help on campus?

While we are the only group that offers free year round statistical consulting geared towards researchers on the entire campus, there are other groups that offer related  services that compliment our services.  The Statistical Biomathematical Consulting Clinic and Paid Statistical Consulting via the UCLA Statistics Department offer fee for service consulting services.  Also, the UCLA Biostatistics Department offers Free Statistical Consulting, but we believe this is only available when class is in session. 

How many web pages do you have? How did you get so many web pages?

As of August 2003, our site has over 2,700 web pages representing about 17,000 printed pages.  Our site started in September 1999 by documenting common questions from our consulting experiences. Over the year we have continued to add pages documenting what we have learned in consulting, as well as documenting what we have learned preparing for future consulting.  You can see how our site has grown by visiting snapshots of the past from 12/19/96; 12/03/98 ; 09/09/99(sas) ; 09/09/99(stata) ; 10/7/99 ; 8/15/00 ; 6/03/01 ; 10/05/01; 2/19/2002; 6/01/2002. 

How do the web pages relate to your walk in consulting?

There is a feedback loop between our web pages and our walk in consulting.  When we see certain questions or themes of questions arise in consulting, it is a way of telling us that we need to have web pages that go into detail on such topics. We find that clients frequently consult our web pages and then ask us more challenging and sophisticated questions since they have already used the web to answer many of their questions.

Do you get many hits to your site?

From September 1999 to August 2003 we have received over six million hits to our site. As of Summer 2003, we are averaging about 350,000 hits per month.

Do you know how I can access online books, journals, and interesting papers?

If you visit our Statistics Books for Loan and Downloadable Books, there are a number of statistics books that are available for download (many requiring that you connect via a UCLA IP address).  Also, we have links to a number of Statistics Papers for Download.  Many of these journals are available because of licenses purchased by the UCLA library and the StatsNetBase books.

Can you help me get statistical software?

Software Central (another group within ATS) has worked to arrange discounted pricing for many of the statistical packages we use (including SAS, Stata, SPSS, Stat/Transfer, SUDAAN, HLM).  For more information see their page at http://www.softwarecentral.ucla.edu/default.htm .

Can you help me with GIS Software?

The Advanced Technologies group here at ATS can help you with GIS software, such as ARCGIS and ARCVIEW.  See their page at http://www.ats.ucla.edu/portal/research_activities/gis/default.htm for more information.

Are there labs on campus where I can do my statistical computing?

Yes.  The CLICC has computers with SAS, Stata, SPSS, SUDAAN, MLwiN, WesVar, Mplus, and more.  All you need is a Bruin Online account and you can stop by and login.  Also see the UCLA Campus Computer Labs at http://map.ais.ucla.edu/ for links to a number of labs on campus. 

I am a Professor (or I am a TA). Can you help me teach statistics?

Yes.  You are welcome to use any of the materials from our web site for non-commercial purposes.  In addition, our Resources for Teaching Statistics seminar has numerous resources within our site and from other sites around the world. We also welcome you to our consulting and we can talk with you and see how we may be able to assist or possibly collaborate.

If you need a lab for teaching hands on classes, you might check with the CLICC at http://www.clicc.ucla.edu .

Can I use your web pages for my teaching?

The short answer is yes, you may use, copy, or adapt our pages for your use as long as the use is educational and non-commercial, see our copyright statement for more details.

Do you teach statistics?

We focus on answering questions on how to analyze data using statistical software.  If you need help understanding statistics, perhaps you might want to check out the Statistics Tutors within the UCLA Statistics Department or take a statistics class.

Can you teach me how to use my computer?

Unfortunately we cannot.  But the UCLA LearnIT has online training on topics like Access, Excel, Photoshop, html, Word, and more! See http://learnit.ucla.edu/ for more information.  .