Communicating Statistical Findings to Consulting Clients Operating in a Decisionmaking Climate: Best and Worst Practices

This webpage contains resources dedicated to the JSM 2014 contributed panel session "Communicating Statistical Findings to Consulting Clients Operating in a Decisionmaking Climate: Best and Worst Practices".

Session Slides

The session slides are available here:

Session Slides (.pptx file)

Session Slides (.pdf file)

Principles to Guide Sound Statistical Consulting

The following handout, prepared by Dr. Ralph Turner, outlines several important principles which should guide sound statistical consulting:

Some Principles to Guide Sound Statistical Consulting.

Consulting in a Decision-Making Environment

Dr. MaryJo Smith compiled a list of key things to remember when consulting in a decision-making environment:

Key Things to Remember When Consulting in a Decision-Making Environment

Presenting Statistical Findings

Mike Greene compiled a simple yet effective checklist for setting the right "level" for our audience (e.g., clients, team members) when presenting/communicating statistical findings to make sure the audience understands our statistical findings and their implications for decision-making:

Setting the Right "Level" for Our Audience.

Dr. John (Jack) Schuenemeyer put together a list of suggestions and comments on the use of slides in presentations:

Using Slides in Presentations.

Templates

Dr. Ralph Turner kindly contributed several template documents for communicating with consulting clients, which can be downloaded from the links provided below.

Meeting Minutes Template

Statement of Work Template

Table Shells Template

Protocol Template

Final Report Template

Designing and Presenting Statistical Tables

The handout below, prepared by Dr. Isabella Ghement, lists some general principles for designing statistical tables:

General Principles for Designing Statistical Tables.

Complex statistical analyses often result in a multitude of tables which report the numerical findings of these analyses. Presenting all of these tables to clients in an unstructured fashion can easily lead to confusion. Excel provides an elegant framework for organizing tables to facilitate easy navigation among different tables and incorporate table annotations. The links below provide (1) step-by-step instructions on creating a set of navigable tables in Excel and (2) an example of such set of tables. The instructions and tables were prepared by Dr. Isabella Ghement based on materials provided by Dr. Ralph Turner.

(1) Creating navigable tables in Excel

(2) Example of navigable tables in Excel

Decision Making Under Uncertainty

Dr. John (Jack) Schuenemeyer prepared a helpful handout on decision making under uncertainty:

Decision Making Under Uncertainty.

The handout includes two recent references worth checking out - one on p-values and their interpretation, the other on environmental decisions in the face of uncertainty, as follows:

(i) "Scientific method: Statistical errors", by Regina Nuzzo, Nature, v. 506, p. 150-152, Feb 2014;

(ii) "Environmental decisions in the face of uncertainty", by the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press.

Communicating Uncertainty

The following reference links to other useful references on how to communicate uncertainty:

Communicating Uncertainty of Results.