Page 27 - PATIENT REGISTRY DATA FOR RESEARCH: A Basic Practical Guide

Chapter 3 - Data Preparation

One of the compulsory requirements for conducting a quantitative research is data

preparation. There is a wide variety of many different types of data which will be collected

by a patient registry. The data retrieved from the registry should have been formatted in a

way which makes them amenable to subsequent statistical analysis. Thus, the data analysis

may not make sense if proper and adequate data preparation procedures have not been

implemented.

The complexity of the data preparation procedures for patient registry data will

depend on many factors, including the sheer volume of registry data, the intended scope of

the study, its study design, study objectives and many more. Hence, each of these factors will

impose its specific requirements on the data preparation of registry data, which is necessary

for transforming these data into a form that can produce meaningful results upon statistical

analysis.

Therefore, after all the data have been collected or derived, it is very important for the

researchers to prepare a proper data preparation plan, which shall incorporate several

important considerations such as (i) handling of duplicates found in a data set, (ii) matching

and combining data from different data sets when necessary, (iii) specifying the plans for data

analysis that correspond to major aims and objectives of a registry-based study, (iv) data

cleaning, (v) handling missing data in a registry.