Hello everyone
I am after advice about the best way to record time and date information when collecting information about food poisoning outbreaks, given epidata does not have a time/date field. We want this information to estimate incubation periods, in order to get clues about the likely illness.
Incubation Incubation = time from when someone is exposed to the time they become unwell. For example someone may eat a buffet meal at 7pm on 21 February and become unwell at 1am on 22 February = incubation of 6 hours.
Current method At the moment we: a) enter information in two fields. OnsetDay is recorded in a date field, and onsettime in a numeric field (####) b) list the two fields (using epi info) to view the information c) calculate incubation manually.
Is there a better/easier way to do this? Also what is the recommended way for entering 24 clock time - should 7.30pm be 1930 or 19.30
thanks very much
Christine
Christine Roseveare Analyst Regional Public Health 570 9194 027 495 9671