Epidata friends,
I just spend almost the whole day trying to fix some typing errors. Nothing more than usual before starting some analysis. However It came to my attention that having just one key field maybe a lot misleading.
Lets say that there a key id field called number in qes.
v1 number #########
if the one who is typing types the worng number lets say 231022009 instead of 221022009 later this error may cause a lot of confusion and lead to other errors. The point is that this particular sort of error is hard to find and locate because this is the one field by which we should locate the record (the link to the CRF).
Looking for the record by other fields is very fustrating unless the record has some very unusual data, such as age 99. How many records I would have with age 99?? Most likeli very few.
One field that very often hleps is the patient intials, although it has very few letters, very unlikeli there is more than 3 or 4 in every thousand records with the same initials.
Therefore I ask to you guys if there is a way in the chk file to retrieve from the name the initials of the full name.
v1 number #########
v2 name: <A >
v3 initials: <A >
The objetictive is:
v2 name: JENS LAURISTEN
v3 initials: JL
v2 name: PEDRO EMMANUEL AMERICANO DO BRASIL
v3 initials PEADB
Telling the typer to type this is an option, but Is it possible stick this magic in the chk file? I looked in the string functions from Epidata documentation but didnt find anything that could make a way around!
Best regards?
Abraço forte e que a força esteja com você, Pedro Emmanuel