The Institute's Statistical Consulting Service (SCS) provides consultation on a broad range of statistical problems and on the use of computers for statistical analysis. Its services extend beyond the social sciences to other disciplines that make use of statistics. Consultation is available to assist in research design, data collection, data analysis, statistical computing and the presentation of statistical material.

Consultation is provided by a group of faculty drawn from York University's Departments of Sociology, Psychology, and Mathematics and Statistics, in conjunction with full-time professional staff at ISR. The faculty and staff have extensive experience with all forms of statistical analysis. Topics for which assistance is available include: regression analysis, multivariate analysis, stochastic processes, probability theory, exploratory data analysis, scaling and cluster analysis; analysis of categorical data, survey data, and longitudinal data; experimental design; survey sampling; and statistical computing.

Three times a year, the Statistical Consulting Service offers short courses on various aspects of statistics and statistical computing, including regular introductions to the SPSS and SAS statistical packages. Recent course offerings have included regression diagnostics, bootstrapping techniques, an introduction to the LISREL module in SPSS, graphical methods for categorical data, confirmatory factor analysis, model-based approaches to cluster analysis and visual methods for statistical data analysis. The Statistical Consulting Service staff also assist in teaching these topics by giving presentations in regular university classes.

The SCS staff maintains a regular schedule of office hours during the academic year. The Statistical Consulting Service primarily serves the York University community; for others, consultation is available on a fee-for-service basis.