The ICDS acts for its statistical service in accordance with the ethical code established by the American Statistical Society.
General Rules
Consultant and client are lead by the principles of professional and scientific integrity. The variety of methodological support is extensive so that no fixed terms nor expectations can be set apriori. Consultants will not be pressured in time nor course of action. The quality of the data defines the statistical potential and are the responsibility of the client. The consultants will provide their service within that potential, offering no guarantee that the most optimal analysis is possible. Consultants can always exert their right to decline or stop an assignment, also based on poor data quality or conclusions fail to meet basic scientific requirements.
Consultants
The degree of involvement of the consultant will be discussed in advance and agreed upon with the client. The consultant aims to offer the most appropriate scientific sollution to succesfully perform the study. The consultant prepares the meeting and takes sufficient time to interact with the client to cover the assignment in full detail, including all issues related to the design of a study, the data and forseable methodological challenges. The consultant informs the client about possible conflicts of interest, ethical limitations and all other aspects that could impact the design, method and analysis. The consultant informs about the statistical background and knowledge of the client and will, in agreement with the client, offer services complementary to the available knowledge. If a client makes suggestions or attempts to perform the analysis, then the consultant will discuss advantages and disadvantages in a way that would meet the background knowledge of the client. If the consultant performs the analyses the client will in the end obtain all relevant details including information on the pre-processing, coding of variables and software details. In preparation of any consecutive scientific communication the consultant will point out conclusions but also limitations and conditions for those conclusions to be valid. The consultant will at the request of the client read through the relevant sections and where necessary suggest improvements.
Note that the consultant will refrain from any analysis when encountering problems with the study design, hypothesis, research questions or data collection. The consultant will offer ways to solve any problems encountered in order to meet statistical 'good practice'. Also note that the consultant only will accept an assignment that is deemed possible, in light of the intended conclusions.
Client
The client tries to specify the project, experiment, hypothesis, research questions, a clearly as possible, including all marginal conditions. The client will therefore also provide a layman introduction of the data collection and nature of the data. Whenever possible, data should be translated to what is statistically of interest. The consultant is typically not an expert in the field of the client so the client should avoid their jargon in as far as possible.
The client offers insight into possible problems with the data collection and measurement process. If the intitial protocol was deviated from, this should be pointed out by the client with explicit information on the causes and how the situation is dealt with. In case of missing data, extreme outliers, or other unexpected observations, they should also be discussed so that the consultant can deal with those in an optimal way. The client will translate the statistical results to their own field of expertise. The client will, together with the consultant, discuss the correct interpretation of results. The client will judge and appreciate the contribution made by the consultant when making scientific reports. If the client considers the contribution of the consultant to be substantial, the client would consider co-authorship for the consultant when agreed upon. When not included as a co-author, because the contribution is minimal, all resulting scientific reports should mention that ICDS performed the analysis unless denied by the consultant.