Statistical Analysis Centre

Head of the Statistical Analysis Centre
Krzysztof Kujawa, PhD
tel. 71 784 16 57, mobile 697 772 142
e-mail: krzysztof.kujawa@umw.edu.pl

Senior Specialist for Administrative Service of the Statistical Analysis Centre,
language proofreading and translations – MD Online and Groy
Magdalena Janik
tel. 71 784 16 58
e-mail: magdalena.janik@umw.edu.pl

Statistical analyses

Anna Kopszak, MA
tel.  695 221 698
e-mail: anna.kopszak@umw.edu.pl

Wojciech Bombała, MA
tel. 71 784 16 60
e-mail: wojciech.bombala@umw.edu.pl

Łucja Janek, MA
tel. 71 784 16 59
e-mail: lucja.janek@umw.edu.pl

Jakub Wronowicz, MA
tel. 71 784 16 60
e-mail: jakub.wronowicz@umw.edu.pl

Statistical Analysis Centre – News (edited by M. Janik)

28 September 2022

DOCTORAL SCHOOL

Classes for the year I (Introduction to Biostatistics) begin with a lecture for the whole year on Monday 10.10 at 14:00 in room 11 at ul. Bartla 5.

Classes for the year II (Biostatistics), i.e. practical classes, start:

on Thursday 13.10:

group 1 – 14.00

group 2 – 15.30

group 3 – 17.00

on Friday 14.10:

group 4 – 14.00

group 5 – 15.30

in the computer laboratory at DS (student dormitory) Jubilatka, ul. Wojciecha z Brudzewa 10 (ground floor).

18 January 2022
Please refer all requests and questions regarding course credits to the assistant professor for didactics,  Krystyna Laszki-Szcząchor, PhD, tel. 71 784 12 70

3 August 2021
We kindly remind you that if there is a need to use an external company for statistical analyses, please follow the guidelines applicable in the Order of the Rector of the Wroclaw Medical University:

https://www.zarz.umed.wroc.pl/images/rektor/2021/116.pdf

In exceptional cases, with the consent of the Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs and the opinion of the Head of the Statistical Analysis Centre, statistical analysis activities may be outsourced to external entities.

3 August 2021
 On 1 August 2021, the Biostatistics Teaching Unit was established within the Statistical Analysis Centre (Order 168/XVI R/2021). The scope of the Unit's tasks includes planning and implementing didactic classes in the field of biostatistics at the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Dentistry and at the Doctoral School.

29 June 2021
 From 29 June to 9 July 2021, Acting Head of the Statistical Analysis Centre, Krzysztof Kujawa, PhD, is on leave.
Please send requests for analyses and consultations to Wojciech Bombała, to the following address wojciech.bombala@umed.wroc.pl

11 June 2021
Due to the progress of the work of the Unit for publications based on clinical data (Rector's Order No. 109/XVI R/2021) regarding COVID-19, we expect numerous requests from this unit in July. Therefore, the possibilities of carrying out other analyses will be severely limited and it should be taken into account that the waiting time for the results of these other analyses will be 4-5 weeks or longer. We therefore ask that you do not delay in reporting the need for urgent analyses and send us your requests as soon as possible, preferably in the coming week. The work of the aforementioned Unit will be prioritised, as agreed during its establishment.

17 May 2021
 From 17 May 2021, the employees of the Statistical Analysis Centre will work in accordance with the current schedule in the Employees tab.

5 May 2021
 Today, the team of the Statistical Analysis Centre was joined by Ms Katarzyna Giniewicz – Specialist for  Statistical Analysis.

6 April 2021
 Due to the current epidemic situation and the order of the Rector of the Wroclaw Medical University No. 75/XVI R/2021, the employees of the Statistical Analysis Centre will be present at work on a rotating basis.

Below is the duty schedule at the Statistical Analysis Centre:

Krzysztof Kujawa – Tuesdays,
Anna Kopszak – Wednesdays,
Magdalena Janik – Thursdays,
Katarzyna Giniewicz – Mondays,
Wojciech Bombała – Fridays.

On other days, contact by e-mail or telephone.

22 March 2021
 Due to the development of the epidemic situation and the recommendations of the Rector of the Wroclaw Medical University, the employees of the Statistical Analysis Centre are switching to remote work. Please contact me by e-mail or telephone.

11 March 2021
 We have added important information in the Requests tab (in point 1f). As we all know, deadlines for completing all types of work are important, and now, at the end of the evaluation period, they are especially important. Therefore, when requesting topics to be developed, please specify the deadlines.
Preferably in two variants:
– a deadline that is suggested/comfortable for you
– a non-negotiable deadline
At the same time, based on past experience, we have removed the point regarding information about the sample size. But the rest remains valid.

1 March 2021
 From today, the team of the Statistical Analysis Centre has increased by two persons. Ms Magdalena Janik was employed as a Statistical Analysis Centre service specialist and will, among other things, deal with the administrative handling of translations and proofreading, and Mr Wojciech Bombała, MA, as a senior specialist for statistical analysis.

28 February 2021
 Next week I will be at the Statistical Analysis Centre on Monday (8.00-17.00) and Tuesday (7.30-17.00).
Note: Important information for those sending data to the Statistical Analysis Centre for analysis. We kindly ask you to remove from the datasets any information that can be used to identify the subjects of the data analysed.

22 February 2021
 This week I am at the Statistical Analysis Centre on Monday (10.00-17.00) and Tuesday (7.30-16.30).

15 February 2021
 From today, the team of the Statistical Analysis Centre expanded by Ms Anna Kopszak, a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Wrocław. This is very good news, taking into account the subsequent requests for analyses, consultations, etc. received by the Statistical Analysis Centre, the number of which has already significantly exceeded 20. Ms Kopszak is at the centre every day between 8.00 and 16.00.

14 February 2021
Next week I will be at the Statistical Analysis Centre on Monday and Tuesday from 9.00 to 17.00. and 8.00 to 16.00., respectively.

3 February 2021
 In the "Requests" tab, I added point 4, regarding the participation of persons from the team of the Statistical Analysis Centre as co-authors of the publication. This is an important issue in the context of publication scoring, and was brought to my attention by several people, for which I thank you.

2 February 2021
 Today I will be at the centre from around 10.00.

30 January 2021
 Next week I will be at the Statistical Analysis Centre on 1-2 February, i.e. on Monday (12.00-18.00) and Tuesday (8.00-16.00).

17 January 2021

• During the week of 18-23.01 I will be at Statistical Analysis Centre on Tuesday (very busy until 16.00) and Wednesday.
• The "Data" tab contains a set of basic rules for preparing data for analyses carried out by the Statistical Analysis Centre. I would be grateful for any comments or suggestions. These rules will be gradually expanded to include new rules regarding other types of analyses.

12 January 2021
 The "Requests" tab contains a description of how to request work to be carried out by the Statistical Analysis Centre. This week, the "Data" tab will also include a second set of key information – on how to prepare the data sent to the Statistical Analysis Centre for statistical analysis.  Many experiences have shown that very often it takes more time to prepare a dataset for analysis than the analysis itself. The rules included in the "Data" tab will be detailed, but reading them and applying them precisely should significantly shorten the time needed to properly prepare data for analysis.

11 January 2021
 From today, the Centre has already moved into its target rooms, i.e. 4A: 135.1 and 136.1 (Head). They are located in the Scientific Medical Information Centre at ul. K. Marcinkowskiego 2-6, on the floor IV, to the right of the stairs.
 
6 January 2021
 During the week of 11-15 January, you can contact me (K. Kujawa): 11-12 January – at the seat (Monday – 9.00-18.00., Tuesday – 8.00-16.00), 13-15 January – by telephone, e-mail or Skype (krzysztof_kujawa).

4 January 2021
 With the new year, we have also launched the website of the Statistical Analysis Centre. We will inform you about more important events in the news. Currently, the unit is in the organisational phase – rooms are being prepared, equipment, software and books are being completed. Further interviews with job candidates are also taking place.
The seat of the Statistical Analysis Centre will be (probably already in January) rooms 4A 135 , 4A 136.1, 4A 139.1 at the Scientific Medical Information Centre at ul. K. Marcinkowskiego 2-6 (floor IV), but currently and temporarily it is room 4A 114.1.
Although we are currently in the team building phase, please feel free to contact me for statistical analyses. This week I am at the centre on Monday and Tuesday between 9.00 and 15.00, and on other days please contact me by telephone or e-mail.

Statistical Analysis Centre – Requests

Due to the diversity of issues and research methods used by the employees of our university, a large variety of tasks for the Statistical Analysis Centre can be expected, as well as a significant number of analyses to be carried out. Below is a proposal for organising contacts with the Statistical Analysis Centre in the area of data analysis, which should ensure effective communication and cooperation.

1. The basis for starting work on a given task will be for the Statistical Analysis Centre to send an e-mail containing the following elements:

a) Name of task for the Statistical Analysis Centre, included in the subject of the e-mail
 It should be as precise as necessary to distinguish the task from others (e.g. from subsequent orders in a given field of research);
 E.g. "Assessment of the effect of drug X on the hemoglobin content in blood in women and men”.

b)  Research topic
 E.g. title of the paper, name of the task/subtask in the research project (even working tasks), etc.

c) Brief description of the topic
 A few sentences helpful for us (the performers of the analyses) in understanding the substantive essence of the research that will be subject to statistical analysis.

d) Hypothesis or research question
 E.g. "Drug X affects the hemoglobin content in the blood in a different way, depending on the gender and age of the patients"
or "Which factor – gender or age – is more closely related to the effect of drug X on the hemoglobin content in the blood?"

e) Description of the dataset, that we have, preferably according to the scheme:
 – response variables, e.g. "Hemoglobin content in the blood"
 – explanatory variables, e.g. "Gender", "Age"

f) Expected deadline for the analysis; please provide two variants:
 – deadline suggested/comfortable for you
 – non-negotiable deadline

2. Due to the fact that the employees of our university have the possibility of installing Statistica (https://www.umed.wroc.pl/statistica), we will mainly use this software to carry out statistical analyses. Having the software installed will enable any employee to open files with results and graphs, etc. and, moreover, for example, to edit them themselves in order to adapt them to the editorial requirements of individual journals.

3. In case of specific questions, the employees of the Statistical Analysis Centre will advise on how to prepare data for analysis, but the preparation of raw (output) data will be the responsibility of the persons/teams requesting a given task for implementation. Rules for the preparation of datasets can be found in the "Data" tab. 

4. Co-authorship of the employees of the Statistical Analysis Centre in publications will be determined individually each time, as it depends on the "author" contribution of an individual person. For example, it is difficult to consider performing an analysis (even a complex one) indicated and defined earlier as an "author" contribution. At the other extreme, there is a situation when the final concept of data analysis (either at the stage of preparing a research project or at the stage of publishing the results) is created entirely as a result of the "author", i.e. independent, contribution of a given person from the Statistical Analysis Centre. Such a contribution is then essentially important for the creation of the publication and can/should be defined as co-authorship.
What is important in the context of the scoring value of the participation of individual co-authors is that no one from the team of the Statistical Analysis Centre is or will be in the "N" of any scientific discipline and has not submitted and will not submit declarations regarding evaluation in 2021.

Feel free to send suggestions, questions and comments

Krzysztof Kujawa

Statistical Analysis Centre – Data

How to prepare data for the Statistical Analysis Centre?

In order for analyses to be carried out efficiently, a ready-to-use dataset must be provided to the Statistical Analysis Centre. This set should be prepared according to the following rules. They apply, for the time being, to a typical dataset in which we distinguish between response variables and explanatory variables. In other cases, the structure of the dataset will be determined together with those requesting the analysis.
Note! The data must not contain personal details. If it is necessary to attribute data to individuals, please replace personal details with any other identifiers.

Rules for the preparation of the dataset:

• Data file format – Excel (xlsx or xls).
• The first sheet in the sent Excel file should be named "Legend" and include expansions of the variable and case names used (or an explanation of the rules for creating them), indicating which variables are:
• response
• explanatory
• The variables are the columns and the rows are the cases.
• Case and variable names should be as short as possible (preferably no longer than 12 characters).
• Names should use the Latin alphabet, numbers, a hyphen and underscore, i.e. no "ą", "ć", etc., and no special characters such as "$", "#", etc.
• Data sheets should contain only the data that will be used in the analyses.
• Identifiers/labels/case names (if any) should be included in the first column.
• The next columns should contain the response variables and the following columns the explanatory variables.
• No data is a blank cell – do not enter hyphens or no data indications such as "ND" etc. there.
• When analysing (e.g. comparing) groups of values of a given response variable X (e.g. blood pressure) that are not linked to each other (e.g. measurements on samples of people with certain diseases A, B, C and D), all the values of variable X should be in one column (i.e. subsequent groups one below the other) and the disease codes (i.e. the explanatory variable) should be in the next column. Any other explanatory variables should be included in the following columns.

• When analysing linked data, e.g. changes in blood pressure BEFORE and AFTER treatment in a given group of patients (distinguishing between females (F) and males (M)) regarding one patient, such data should be included in one row.

Any comments, suggestions are very much needed and welcome.
We will successively supplement these rules with information regarding other types of analyses.