Stats consulting fee?

[Lisa44201]

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There is a possibility I will be hired to work as a statistical analyst on an NSF grant. Statistically it's not going to be difficult, I don't think - based on what the student was saying, this sounds like either a t-test or Wilcoxon rank-sum (depending on assumptions), although I reserve the right to run it through Observation Oriented Modeling just for grins/if the assumption violations get too ugly. How would you work up a billing rate? When I've consulted in the past, I've done both an hourly rate and a flat fee, but the stats were a bit more complicated. OTOH, the reason I got called is because the nuts and bolts of it is beyond the student's area of expertise - the study will involve students in his discipline, but the heart of it is (academic) assessment - so I may be sweating out some of the methodology such that we get useful data. Thoughts?

 

[WisNeuro]

If it's part of a grant, isn't that amount written in beforehand? As in, don't they need to include a breakdown of accounting and where the money is going?

 

[Lisa44201]

He's in the process of writing the grant.

 

[irish80122]

I suppose it depends on if you have a full-time job. On my grants I write in an amount of someone's time and then figure out what their salary would be for that time. For instance, if someone is going to help me for a couple of weeks with something, I will pay his/her salary for 0.5 months including fringe and all that jazz. Now if you aren't in a full-time research position, or if you are doing it as consulting in your free time, I would probably negotiate an hourly rate (FYI, if you work at a university many require that you get consulting approved). I haven't had to do this yet, but given what I have seen I would probably write in how many hours I think I would need at a rate of $80 per hour (I am not sure that this is the going rate, it is just what I have seen recently). I hope that helps some.

 

[Lisa44201]

Thanks, irish!

I do have a full-time job at the University; with the way grants work here, I'd be paid an hourly overload. I'm going to talk to our Research & Grants office to see if they can suggest a rate. Last time I freelanced I charged $125/hr, but that was at a different Uni, and it was a dissertation as opposed to a grant.

 

[irish80122]

Thanks, irish!

I do have a full-time job at the University; with the way grants work here, I'd be paid an hourly overload. I'm going to talk to our Research & Grants office to see if they can suggest a rate. Last time I freelanced I charged $125/hr, but that was at a different Uni, and it was a dissertation as opposed to a grant.

If you have consulted for $125 before I would see if you can get it again. Worst the PI can say is no, and if you get it I think that is a pretty good rate for how stats consulting goes (but then again I am in the southeast, and the going rate may differ).