Abstract
Finally, after a lot of thinking, planning and talking, we finally get to the point where we consider the data which is to be used for our research study. A research study is nothing without data, and the amount of attention given to its acquisition, structure, verification, preparation, manipulation, cleaning, restructuring and eventual approval as “ready for analysis” should be considerable. For this reason, the subject of ‘Data’ in this book has been split into two chapters. The first covers the acquisition and verification of the data and the second focuses on the manipulations necessary to provide an “analysis-ready” set of data.
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Notes
- 1.
A file extension is the name for the coded letters which follow the name of a file and which come after the full stop (period) punctuation mark which separates the file name from the extension. Confusingly, full stops are usually valid characters as part of the filename itself, so it is the last full stop in a fully qualified filename which is the separator.
- 2.
Cloud-based storage means file store capacity which is often hosted by a third-party and for which the end user does not need to know exact details of the data’s physical location.
- 3.
For example: bootstrapping.
- 4.
Medical research using data on animals or other non-human biological life forms comprises the minority of all research conducted for the benefit of medicine. This book confines its scope to clinical research, which relates to humans.
- 5.
Encryption converts data into coded form to prevent access by unauthorized sources.
- 6.
This is meant in a loose sense. The discussion of analytical methods which can take account of certain types of missing data is deferred until later (see Chap. 9).
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Culliford, D. (2022). Data I. In: Applied Statistical Considerations for Clinical Researchers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87410-0_5
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