Substantive statistical advice or analysis provided by a statistician to a research project — including study design, sample-size calculation, analytic plan, model selection, code, or interpretation — that materially shapes the research's quantitative findings.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A biostatistician who designed the analytic plan and ran all primary analyses, listed as an author under CRediT 'Formal analysis'

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A 10-minute conversation about which t-test to use is statistical advice but typically below the threshold for named credit

Editorial commentary

Where the statistical contribution rises to substantive intellectual input (designed the analysis, chose the methods, ran the models), authorship is warranted under most criteria; where it is bounded advice on a specific question, named acknowledgement is appropriate. CRediT distinguishes ‘Formal analysis’ from ‘Methodology’ to clarify the role.

References

NISO CRediT Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022)
American Statistical Association Ethical Guidelines (2018)

Also known as

Statistical advice · Biostatistical consultancy

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Statistical consultancy"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/statistical-consultancy" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/statistical-consultancy",
  "name": "Statistical consultancy",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/statistical-consultancy",
  "description": "Substantive statistical advice or analysis provided by a statistician to a research project — including study design, sample-size calculation, analytic plan, model selection, code, or interpretation — that materially shapes the research's quantitative findings.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/statistical-consultancy",
  "sameAs": [
    "Statistical advice",
    "Biostatistical consultancy"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T01:58:42",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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