Policies
All CSCAR@ISR services are governed by the following policies:
- Clients from all three University of Michigan campuses can schedule up to three (3) one-hour appointments with CSCAR@ISR staff for a specific research problem at no cost. After these three appointments, additional scheduled appointments related to the same research problem will have an associated fee, to be determined based on the consultant involved. This appointment counter will "reset" for new research problems, based on the discretion of the consultant and the CSCAR@ISR faculty leads. Additional appointments (above the first three (3) free hours), and/or ongoing support for research projects are available at the following hourly rates:
Clients Internal to U of M
CSCAR GSRA$33/hrCSCAR Staff$93/hrCSCAR Faculty$151/hrExternal Clients
CSCAR GSRA$66/hrCSCAR Staff$186/hrCSCAR Faculty$302/hr - CSCAR@ISR consultants will generally be available for in-person meetings at one of the three spokes, but clients can also schedule Zoom meetings as needed.
- Quick email questions submitted to CSCAR@ISR will be answered by a CSCAR@ISR staff member within 24 hours of receipt on business days. If submitted questions are overly complex, an appointment with a consultant will be suggested. Excessive use of this email address for questions or "spamming" by clients will be addressed as needed by the CSCAR@ISR Director.
- CSCAR@ISR consultants may make use of AI tools in helping to answer your questions, but solutions proposed by any AI tools will be carefully vetted by the consultant prior to becoming our final recommendations.
- All meetings with CSCAR@ISR clients will be documented by CSCAR@ISR staff, and clients will immediately receive electronic documentation summarizing the topics discussed at the appointment upon completion of the appointment.
- Requests to add CSCAR@ISR staff to existing research projects, where a portion of the CSCAR@ISR staff member's salary will be covered by that project, will be honored in the order that they are received, and final cost parameters will be determined in conjunction with CSCAR@ISR leadership.
- All CSCAR@ISR clients will be treated with the utmost respect, and will receive clear, friendly, and professional advice related to their questions. It is our expectation that CSCAR@ISR staff will be treated with equal respect in turn. Any threatening, abusive, or harassing behavior toward CSCAR@ISR staff will not be tolerated and may result in a loss of the ability to use this service.
- CSCAR@ISR services are limited to faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students assisting faculty, staff, or graduate students with research projects at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses. Individuals from external institutions or companies seeking assistance with ongoing research projects should email the CSCAR@ISR Director about their needs.
- Assistance with graduate or undergraduate coursework will not be provided. All submitted questions and consulting appointments should be related to research projects and not courses.
- CSCAR@ISR cannot assist individual faculty, staff, or graduate students who have been invited to review manuscripts that have been submitted to peer-reviewed journals. We encourage individuals who do not have the necessary statistical expertise to provide a thorough review of a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal to simply turn down that invitation.
- We encourage clients submitting grant proposals who wish to include CSCAR@ISR staff in their budgets to add our services to those proposals, using a two-step approach:
- include the language below (edited as desired) regarding CSCAR@ISR services to the "Facilities" documentation for the proposal
- include CSCAR@ISR service cost in the Other Direct Cost in their itemized sponsor budget. We suggest the following budget justification language:
- CSCAR@ISR is a collaborative effort among faculty, staff, and PhD students and provides general statistical consulting services, as well as specialized consultation on specific methodological and computational topics. This cost is budgeted at $X per year (X hours at $X/per hour)… Add additional detail as desired.
Consulting for Statistics, Computing, and Analytics Research @ ISR (CSCAR@ISR)
CSCAR@ISR is an interdisciplinary statistical consulting, training, and research unit housed primarily within the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, and encompasses statisticians covering a diverse range of disciplines and experience levels, including faculty, master's-level staff, and graduate students. Housed administratively within the ISR-Thompson building, CSCAR@ISR operates out of 3 physical locations across the Ann Arbor campus: the ISR spoke at 426 Thompson (specializing in quantitative social science and survey research), the Statistics spoke within the Statistics Department at West Hall (specializing in theoretical statistics, modeling techniques, and machine learning), and the Biostatistics spoke within the Biostatistics Department at the School of Public Health (specializing in biostatistics and oriented toward research in the fields of medicine and biology). CSCAR@ISR provides integrated and comprehensive statistical consulting services (free of charge for all U-M students, faculty, and staff; up to 3 hours of free consultation on each unique research project) covering all aspects of research, including theoretical statistics, study design and statistical analysis (from study design through presentation of research results), modeling and hypothesis tests of all kinds, data acquisition and security, data visualization, data science, and super intelligence. In addition to the consulting services, CSCAR@ISR also offers an educational workshop series designed to teach state-of-the-art techniques in statistics, computing, and software. Finally, CSCAR@ISR offers direct for-pay research support to any researchers (both internal to U-M and external) on any project wishing to use their own funds to hire a portion of a CSCAR@ISR team member's time to directly perform research tasks in any of the domains mentioned above.
Please email the CSCAR@ISR Director with questions about any of these policies.