<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>Just fyi:<br><div>and i hope i'm not trying everybody's patience here.<br></div>Our datasets are generally a mix of
demographic/behavioral variables + host of "biologic" variables
whether hormonal profiles of urine samples (daily urines for up to 6
months in the study I've worked on for decades) or now, for better or
worse, oodles (the scientific term..) of genetic based vars - there could be,
literally, 1000s of snps for each subject. yuck. AND then (far too many imo ;-) variables that attempt to capture all the various and sundry "exposure" variables.<br></div> we've working towards a more or less standard set of SAS missing values that attempt to deal with basic "missing situations" - but with the long history of some of these projects, even now we're not completely there, yet. <br>
</div>.r = 'respondent refused'<br></div>.d = "don't know"<br></div>.i = "imputed deletion"<br></div>. = "missing" /* just missing from the qx or biological sample */<br></div>
.l = "lost to followup"<br></div>.m = "missing portion of derived var" <br> /* say a derived rate of change var requires 5 days of progesterone */<br><div> /* hormone and only has 3 days in the sequence, .m could reflect that */<br>
</div><div>(the above is not completely accurate - i'm at home w/ the world cup.<br></div><div>Character variables are different kettle of fish.<br></div><div><br></div><div>a simple study might be one i've worked on forever: Early Pregnancy Study<br>
<a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/epi/studies/eps/index.cfm">http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/epi/studies/eps/index.cfm</a><br></div><div>a somewhat more complex study: Norway Facial Clefts<br>
<a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/epi/studies/ncl/index.cfm">http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/epi/studies/ncl/index.cfm</a><br></div><div>a horribly complex study on which i've not had to work much: Sisters Breast Cancer Study<br>
<a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/epi/studies/sister/index.cfm">http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/atniehs/labs/epi/studies/sister/index.cfm</a><br><br> As I've mentioned before, my ideal would be to convince everyone
(besides the PIs with whom i've worked most closely ) that having the
excellent base of documentation provided by various DDI based solutions
(Nesstar, Collectica (which i haven't worked with) is not just a good
idea, but necessary. For many years we used a Cobo l/ Vax based codebook
generation which was MUCH better than nothing, although v. long in the
tooth. But that was discarded ~ 14 yrs ago and I regard the replacement
(annotated questionnaires, SAS proc contents and various modes of
summarizing each variable) as less than satisfactory. But the missing
values bit is the most frequently used argument against DDI solutions. <br></div><div>Though I'm tempted to take frequencies of just the various missings for each variable and paste them into one of the documentation fields available for each variable.<br>
</div><div><br></div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Bob McConnaughey<br></span></div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Westat/NIEHS Epidemiology Support.<br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
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<br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">"At times like this, an adult needs a drink."</span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
<span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.666666984558105px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Dance, Dance, Dance. H. Murakami</span>
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