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Analysis-Ready Data Sets Tutorial

Step by step tutorial on how to make your data analysis-ready using Excel or REDCap.

File Creation

Best Practices for Creating and Formatting Two-Dimensional Data Files

Researchers and statisticians usually work with two-dimensional data structures.

A spreadsheet is a two-dimensional way of storing, viewing, analyzing, and altering two-dimensional data. Microsoft Excel has letters representing columns (A, B, C, D, …) and numbers representing rows (1, 2, 3, 4, …).

Thus, each cell can be represented by a notation like A1 denoting the intersection of column A and row 1.

There are 6 rules for creating and formatting two-dimensional data when using Excel.

 

REDCap takes care of this for you.