Clean Process Data Methodology -- Emerging Approaches in the Management and Preparation of Longitudinal Analysis Sets

James W. McNally, University of Michigan

Clean Process Data represents a specific philosophy towards the cleaning and organizing complex secondary data that leaves a fully reproducible footprint of each stage of the data preparation process as well as a final analysis product. The organizational approach underlying this process represents a significant contribution to the methodology of data preparation because the storage structure allows complex transformations and reformatting of data to be easily located programmatically and exactly reproduced every time. This is important because the cleaning and preparation of secondary data represents an expensive and time consuming endeavor. The presence of standardized data preparation files not only enhances the efficiency of the research process, it also adds ongoing value to these studies as secondary data. This poster will provide an overview of the Clean Process approach and how it can be applied to the preparation of complex data to enhance use and facilitation analysis of research questions.