DMAC hosts workshop on best practices of data management

On August 23, 2023, the Data Management and Analytics Core (DMAC) hosted a workshop to help participants develop an efficient data management plan. The main goal was to provide the participants with general guidance on how to structure and collect data, and how the quality assurance and data submission processes work before they can be used for analysis. The workshop was held on Zoom and had 27 participants including: students, faculty, and researcher staff, from Wayne State University, the University of Florida, the Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Henry Ford Health Systems. The workshop was organized and chaired by F. Gianluca Sperone, Assistant Professor (Teaching) in the Environmental Science and Geology Department at Wayne State University and a DMAC Co-I, where he is responsible for the Geospatial Visualization and Analysis of CLEAR. The speakers of the workshop were:

• Qiong (Joan) Zhang, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at  Michigan State University, and a Biostatistician within the Henry Ford Health System. She is also a Co-I within DMAC, responsible for the geospatial modeling and analyses of health and other environmental factors.
• Trueman Wu, a Programmer Analyst, Research Design and Analysis at Henry Ford Health System and within DMAC.
• Yousuf Hussian, a Research Programmer at Henry Ford Health System and within DMAC

The speakers covered the following aspects of the data management:

• Role and responsibility of DMAC
• What data storage options are available at DMAC.
• Planning your research: what is the research question your data needs to answer?
• Best practices for structuring your data.
• Data Types, data file name convention, data element/variable name convention
• How DMAC can assist with data storage and data management
• How to submit your data to DMAC
• Data quality checks and query resolution
• Preparing data for analysis

After the speaker’s presentation, the participants were presented with a hands-on activity in which they were presented with some sample dataset and asked to choose one and perform a manual quality check based on the concepts presented during the workshop. After their evaluation, they were asked to submit the dataset via a dedicated sandbox webpage (designed specifically for this workshop) to familiarize with the data submission process used by DMAC and the submission report that automatically checks the dataset submitted. This report notifies the user whether the dataset meets the minimum data structure/format requested by DMAC to start any type of data analysis. This workshop guided the participants through the necessary concepts and practices needed to develop a data management plan. This is important as funding agencies like NSF and NIH are now requiring the development and submission of a Data Management Plan when submitting grant proposals. The workshop was received very positively and enthusiastically by the participants.