Planning your analysis

Whether you are in the early stages of designing your study or already have data collected and aren’t sure how to proceed, the Core can help you develop a comprehensive analytic plan that will address your research aims.

Data aggregation & cleaning

Core staff have expertise in data science and proficiency in R, SAS, and SPSS statistical software. We can help you aggregate data from multiple sources (e.g., surveys, electronic medical records, research databases) into a single dataset and provide an organized codebook to keep track of your variables. Additionally, we can perform data cleaning, calculate composite scores, and perform missing data imputation so that you are prepared to begin your analysis.

Exploratory data analysis

Before diving into an analysis, it is important to first explore and describe the dataset. We start by examining the following:

• Descriptive statistics
• Data distributions
• Semantic analysis (for text)
• Bivariate correlations
• Outlier identification
• Missing data patterns

Hypothesis testing

If your analytic plan involves hypothesis testing, the Core can help you choose an appropriate statistical test and interpret your results.

Generating statistical models

Core staff will apply training in advanced statistical methods to generate and evaluate statistical models based on your data, including:

• Regression models
• Factor analytic model
• IRT/Rasch model
• Structural equation models
• Mixture models
• Topic models (for text)

Data visualizations

Core members will use their expertise in data visualization to transform your data into manuscript-ready tables and figures. We can also create interactive data dashboards that make it easy for you to explore and understand your data.