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The Content of Statistics and Data Science Collaborations: the QQQ Framework

For today's applied statisticians and data scientists, collaboration is a reality. Statisticians (and data scientists) may collaborate with domain experts across academic fields, industry sectors, and governmental and non-governmental organizations. Thus, statisticians must develop skills and techniques for collaboration. To this end, we advance a framework called the Qualitative-Quantitative-Qualitative (QQQ, pronounced "Q-Q-Q") approach to systematize the content of statistical collaborations. The QQQ approach explicitly emphasizes the importance of the qualitative context of a project, as well as the qualitative interpretation of quantitative findings. We explain the QQQ approach and each of its components as applied to statistics and data science consultations and collaborations. We provide guidance for implementing each stage of the approach and present data evaluating the effectiveness of teaching the QQQ approach to beginning collaborators.