HCAI Information for ACtion 2010 HCAI Information for Action, November 2010 Data Manipulation Presenter: Mari Morgan, Wendy Harrison, Dafydd Williams

HCAI Information for ACtion 2010 Outline Importing data into Excel Formatting the spreadsheet Observing the data Using the data Cleaning the data Analysing the data Presenting the data

Importing Data File types: ‘.xls’ ‘.csv’ ‘.txt’ Selecting delimiter types: tab, comma, “” Selecting data types for each column Saving as Excel file

Formatting Spreadsheet for Analysis Making the columns wider Changing data formats Inserting Headings Saving your changes

Observing the Data Before you start to use the data you need to know what is there: What data items? - scroll across to look at all columns What response types? - Use filters to look at all responses given

Using the Data What questions do we have? Can this data set answer these questions? What questions can this data set answer? Plan of Analysis

Cleaning the Data Before you start analysis you need to make sure your data is as clean as possible. If you have to make changes at a later date, you may have to reanalyse everything!!!

Cleaning the Data 1. Use filters to look for blanks Do you want to remove records that have blanks in particular fields? Eg SSI Replace blanks with “unknown” etc – can help with using pivot tables

Cleaning the Data 2. Use filters to look for errors For example: - dates outside date range - non consecutive dates - inappropriate ages/ gender for procedures - dependent responses Are you going to follow these up or remove?

Cleaning the Data 3. Save the cleaned data set separately - label it as clean

Analysing the Data Use the clean data set Do you want to analyse all of the clean data or subset? - Select on data range etc using filters - Save subset for analysis – label as analysis data

Analysing the Data Make a definitive record count Use analysis plan Questions can be answered using: Sorting Filters Pivots

Analysing the Data Calculating rates Is there a denominator already present in the data set? – can use to calculate % (? include unknowns) Can you access a denominator elsewhere? eg hospital throughput info from information dept

Presenting the Data Text in a document Tables – can create in Excel or transfer to Word Graphs