A highly "conflict of interest" based suggestion could be to say this:
a. Try to analyze your data with EpiData Analysis - freely available from the download page, where you found EpiData Entry b. Export your data to SPSS Repeat the analysis in SPSS c. Tell os of your experience - such that we can learn about the advantage and disadvantage of using a commercial package and EpiData Analysis. Also remember to tell us about the cost for the license of SPSS.
The reasoning of my suggestion is that there are so many "firm fixed" suggestions of what is the easiest way of doing this or that - but very few actual comparisons in terms of time to use, reproducibility, cost of software, cost of personnel time ....
Personally I used SPSS from about 1979 to 1995, but switched to Stata due to the large user base in research developing modules for Stata and lack of hierarchical/cluster analysis in SPSS, plus the problems of the special SPSS output files which can only be used when you have spss installed.. In recent years I have used EpiData Analysis for daily analysis and Stata for regression and larger data sets.
The basic principles are the same: a. Develop proper protocols for research studies. Only collect the minimal dataset needed. b Quality assure your data by proper handling during entry or datamanagement, including the addition of labels and creation of sufficient datadocumentation. c. Analyse data by a pre-specified analysis plan - either specifically or a general outline. Save your analysis in the form of a structured command file (pgm or syntax, in Stata called do files).
regards Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association
On 2011-02-24 17:36, epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:
All of what you want to do is available in the documentation at the epidata.dk website. You can easily get your data into SPSS - check out the Data In/Out functions of EpiData Entry. Please don't even consider entering your data again. Jamie
On 2011-02-23, Niamh wrote:
I was wondering is it possible to export all of my data in Epidata into SPSS. Or is it better to manually put it into SPSS.