The Biostatistics and Computing Facility provides interactive statistical consultation and collaboration to all researchers at the AHF. House primarily at the Ford Foundation building gin New York City, the facility also maintains office space at NDI for members to interact with researchers. The facility is staffed by a senior biostatistician (Facility Head), a biostatistician, an assistant systems analyst/programmer and a statistical assistant. Facility members have been involved at every stage of a research project at AHF for many years. During the past year, the facility has helped to develop study designs and conduct power analyses on over 30 research proposal ranging in complexity from two-group animal comparisons to large- scale clustered designs in epidemiological studies. Over 500 statistical analyses (from chi-square tests to polytomous logistic regression models) were done on over 100 projects spanning every Program in the AHFCC. Facility members were also named co-authors on over 15 manuscripts submitted for publication. The facility's main computing resource is the Sun SPARC station 2 with CD- ROM and tape drives, located in New York City. Each family member has an IBM-compatible personal computer (80486 processor or higher) connected to an individual Hewlett-Packard laser printed and can access the Sun mainframe through NFS software. On the Sun mainframe, SAS is the main statistical software program used for data analysis and management. In addition, PC-versions of the statistical packages SPSS and BMDP are available as well as software to conduct power analyses (SOLO, nQuery, EGRET Siz) and to produce graphics (Slidewrite, Harvard Graphics). At the NDI office, a facility-owned personal computer is available along with a direct connection to the Sun mainframe. Although the facility provides AHFCC standard statistical services from start to finish such as (a) the develop of study design/power analyses, (b) data quality control, management and processing for ongoing studies, and (c) the statistical analyses, interpretation and presentation of project results, the facility prides itself on its ability to consider and evaluate both past and current statistical methodology so that tit can continually refine its skills and maximize its ability to serve and benefit AHF researchers.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 27 publications
