Some faculty would feel that this situation entitles the graduate student to no authorship credit, while others feel it is appropriate for graduate students to receive junior authorship credit in such cases. At the other extreme is the case where the graduate student selects the variables to be examined, makes many substantive decisions about data analysis, and shapes the statistical approach used in the research. In this case, the graduate assistant certainly should receive credit and possibly authorship, although the scope of this contribution must be determined relative to input. Writing the text of a paper often involves much more than simply summarizing the results of the data at hand. This is certainly true for qualitative work, where the selection of appropriate material from the rich body of collected data is an essential part of the research process.
Writing is no less of a creative undertaking in research based principally on quantitative data.
Sometimes the writing of a paper is shared, but more often one author takes the lead in writing a portion of the entire text. Many involved in collaborative research feel that writing is the decisive contribution, that whoever wrote the paper is entitled to be first author. Collaborators should keep in mind that writing is an important component of the final project, but that there may be other important contributions as well. Often one partner in a collaboration writes and the other edits. There may be several rounds of editorial revisions before a paper is published.