Apart from the design and documentation aspects (and SPSS)  I’ve no experience in this area, but I’m sure someone on these lists will be able to offer technical and professional advice to Robert .

 

John F Hall (Mr)

[Retired academic survey researcher]

 

Email:   [log in to unmask] 

Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

SPSS start page:  www.surveyresearch.weebly.com/1-survey-analysis-workshop

 

 

 

 

From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]EDU] On Behalf Of Robert Lundqvist
Sent: 02 December 2016 13:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Advice on data management?

 

I have become slightly involved in a project where the basic aim is to study the development of allergy and asthma among children. All children born at the local hospital will be followed for some time, and during that time there will be several questionnaires to parents, measurements of different variables in blood, faeces, placenta and so on. All files will of course contain a key/connector for each child.

 

The question from the researchers now as the data is beginning to pile up is how the material should be organized. (Somewhat late in my own view…) One suggestion has been to put everything into some database management system, such as Access or SQL. Another that files should be “local”, saved in a suitable format (SPSS, text,…) and stored in some well-organized folder structure. Since I have limited experience of my own from working with Access or similar, especially not with large and complex data sets, and also because I know several of the researchers involved are fairly good SPSS users, I tend to lean towards the latter structure. I simply suspect that storage as well as maintenance and analysis will be easier with such a structure. But this might be entirely wrong due to my clearly far too limited experiences.

 

Any suggestions as to how a good structure for the management of a complex set of data sets might be built, the SPSS way or some other?

 

Robert

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