Please register for consulting by e-mail via imsb-kontakt [at] uni-koeln.de. Please submit the following documents as far as appropriate for your project (see below). Doctoral candidates who are also looking for a publication of their results, please register as described under Advice on the doctoral thesis.
Note: Please also note the privacy policy.
Our information obligations according to Art. 13 DSGVO can be found here.

• Registration form:
  • Registration form (download PDF document)
• Exposé or outline of the project
• For research projects: study protocol, if already available
• If data have already been captured: clear description of the variables in the data record to ensure readability by any software (eg when importing into SPSS © Statistics) and to allow a clear interpretation. Please refer to the instructions on our website for recommendations on data structure and collection
• Blank tables or sketches of desired graphics for publications
• For publications, a literature search should already have been carried out and an introduction should be available
• If possible, the author guidelines of the journal in which you wish to publish
• Deadline for submission or data analysis, if any

We check whether according to the requirements of your project all documents for an effective consultation are available. If necessary, you will need to submit further documentation.

Please note that missing or insufficient documention or unsuitable data can lead to considerable delays in the processing of your project.

For your project a contact person will be specified, depending on the capacities of the IMSB and the individual staff members. Your contact person will make an appointment with you and take over the statistical consulting.

In individual cases, it may be necessary to wait, in which case you will receive a notification.

The consultation includes biometric aspects of study planning and implementation, e.g.:

• Planning (e.g. hypotheses, analysis models, selection of target criteria, time points for the determination of the target criteria, study design optimization)
• Sample size calculation
• Randomization
• Data management (as far as biometrically relevant)
• Suitable statistical software
• Plausibility checks
• Dealing with missing values
• Statistical analysis methods
• Graphical display options
• Interpretation of the results
• Statistical method section and review of study protocols and publications

Data analysis can also be done, subject to agreement.

The responsibility for the data (formal or content correctness of data, data security, data protection) remains with the project manager. In particular, we refer to the "Regulations of the University of Cologne for securing good scientific practice and dealing with scientific misconduct", the university-wide "Research Code of Conduct" and the panels on scientific integrity of the University of Cologne. In addition, the "Guidelines for Securing Good Scientific Practice" of the German Research Foundation (DFG) as well as the "Guideline on the Handling of Research Data" at the University of Cologne are explicitly mentioned.
 
If the Institute for Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics or an employee is mentioned in a publication, the work must be submitted to the IMSB prior to submission.
 
If services are provided in the context of the consultation that lead to scientific publications, it is scientifically correct, collegial behavior to credit those IMSB staff who were involved in consulting, according to their share of the work, in the list of authors or in the acknowledgment of a publication.

Affiliation: Institute of Medical Statistics and Computational Biology
Faculty of Medicine • University of Cologne • Cologne, Germany

On the following website you will find guidelines for the reporting of different study types:
http://www.equator-network.org/. Further useful links can be found on our page with information on the planning, implementation, evaluation and publication of studies. Please inform yourself about the relevant documents.