Dear Jens, Some feedback about the document 2.1 about unification and. Here is some feed back from user of EPI6 and Epidata and Epi analysis. There is lots of good function for fine-tuning of the output from analysis. The commonly used commands like FREQ, TABLES, and MEANS would be able to produce tailored output as per the needs.
Few suggestions;
1. FREQ v1 produces the frequency table only. The summary measures such as observations, mean, SD, SE, minimum, maximum, 25th 50th 75th percentile are not shown. The provision of these details is helpful in examining a quantitative variable in detail. EPI6 had the facility of shutting the frequency table (esp. if it was too big) and print only the summary measures. The syntax was, FREQ v1 /n Kindly explore the possibility of this switch with FREQ command and the following switch also is so handy (EPI6). Another function was frequency weighted counts on variable FREQ v1 /SUM=v2, where v1 is a categorical and v2 is numerical variable. Is tab v1 /w=wvar same command or different, is not clear ?
2. Describe command gives the summary measures to some extent. This command has not been activated in the ver 1.1 of Epi Analysis. 3. MEANS command needs thorough overall. It requires the conversions of both the variables as numerical. The categorical variables are not numerical variables. Hence this should be changed accordingly. The (/q or quite) quite switch closes the output totally. Actually this should omit the display of tables only. The summary measures should be displayed as was the case with EPI6 command MEANS v1 v2 /n
4. Dates remain a sour issue with EPI Analysis, though there is lot of help available from the Epidata team members especially Jamie. Is it possible to use SET option to define the date command such as SET DATE FORMAT =mm/dd/yyyy or SET DATE format=dd/mm/yyyy We use most of the time only one type of date format. Then date or date range selection would become simple like simply typing the date variable. mm/dd/yyyy (If this does not make sense from programmers point of view, kindly forgive me)
5. The help manual As EPI ANALYSIS evolves in future, a well-written command reference becomes a necessity esp. keeping in mind the beginners. For example, SET options are clear to experienced user but not to the beginners. Scatter graphs with regression line drawn or an option to draw it like /r
6. Many commands listed in the command reference 1.1 are not implemented yet.
The EPI ANALYSIS would be a wonderful product is most of these options are actually implemented. Keep up this good work.
With regards,
Dr. Shavinder Singh