Leveraging a Community Partnership to Provide Statistical Consulting Experience to Graduate Student Trainees

Developing consulting and collaboration skills in graduate student trainees in statistics and biostatistics is essential to ensure they are prepared for their future careers. There are several approaches to learning these skills, including classroom- and non-classroom-based approaches, with or without clients. We describe a model for practicing statistical consulting skills in which trainees assist local high school students on research projects conducted via the Islands, an online platform simulating a virtual human population that allows for the conduct of simulated research. We describe how the partnership between our institution and the local high school was established and discuss results from a survey that sought to characterize the experiences of the trainees. We found that the trainees felt the experience was a low-stakes, low-time commitment approach for practicing important statistical consulting activities, such as communicating to a non-statistical audience and recommending a statistical method to clients. This model of developing statistical consulting skills allows trainees to work with actual clients on simulated research where the project complexity is controlled. We hope our approach inspires others to leverage a community partnership for providing a unique statistical consulting experience to graduate trainees.