The Data Management and Analysis Core (DMAC) provides support for interdisciplinary child development research. Support services include proposal development, specific aims, study design, sampling, data collection, participant recruitment, data management, data visualization, and statistical analysis for projects ranging from small pilot studies, secondary data analysis, longitudinal cohorts, and large-scale multi-site cluster randomized controlled trials. We currently support more than 20 projects and have served as a data coordinating center, data management hub, and methodologic support for projects for more than 30 years.
To learn more, please email: FPGdata@unc.edu
DMAC Services
Click on the + symbols below to learn more about the support we offer. Contact us at FPGdata@unc.edu.
New Project and Proposals
- Study methods consultation
- Study design consultation
- Proposal development, writing, and refinement
- Full critical proposal review
Study Design
We provide study design support for a variety of study types, including: longitudinal, cross-sectional, nested cohort study designs, randomized controlled trials, cluster randomized controlled trials, secondary data analysis plans, nested cohort studies, and bio-behavioral approaches (e.g., two-stage studies, case cohort, case control studies).
Our study design support includes:
- Formulating aims and hypotheses
- Writing and editing analysis plans
- Sample selection methods
- Power and sample size calculations
- Protocol development
- Randomization strategies
Electronic Data Collection
- Electronic informed consent capture
- In-person data collection (via Blaise, REDCap) of assessments, interviews, biomarkers data, etc. with built-in scripts, validation, adaptive sequencing, and data integrity monitoring tools
- Web-survey (via custom system, Qualtrics, REDCap) including automated mailings and incentive distribution
- Cleaning, double entry, and reconciliation of paper-based data collection
Study Tracking
- Participant and study activity tracking from recruitment through closure
- Basic: support setting up tracking in Excel or Access database
- Complex: custom interactive web-based systems that integrate participant information, study activity tracking, data files received, reporting, and alerts
Data Management
- Database development
- Data cleaning, error checking and reconciliation, and field staff
- Harmonization of variables across time points, versions, and variable changes
- Scoring standardized assessment instruments
- Validation
- Data conversion/formatting (e.g., NDAR/ECHO)
- Cohort building
- Data linkage (i.e., building secondary datasets from multiple/varied sources)
- Auditing data/variables (i.e., quality assurance)
Data Analysis
- Descriptive data
- Simple GIS analysis
- SEM
- Cluster randomized controlled analysis
- Hierarchical linear regression
- Time-to-event analysis (survival analysis)
- Marginal structural models
- Longitudinal data analysis
- Missing data assessment and methods
- Population/sampling weights
- Inverse probability weights
- Intent to treat analyses (ITT)
- Treatment on the treated (ToT)
Data Sharing, Visualization, and Dissemination
- Secure data sharing and receiving, coordinating across sites, de-identification of data, and uploading to registries
- Preparation of figures, tables, and graphic representations for presentations and publications
- Writing methods, results, and discussion sections of reports and manuscripts
- Interactive website for data visualization (e.g., Tableau, R/Shiny)
To engage any of the above support, email us at: FPGdata@unc.edu
CSRL
On July 1, 2024, The Carolina Survey Research Laboratory (CSRL) moved from the Department of Biostatistics to the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.
Since its creation in 1990 as the Survey Research Unit, the Carolina Survey Research Laboratory (CSRL) has provided expertise in data collection, survey design, questionnaire design, population-based estimates, and weighting for the research community at UNC Chapel Hill.
Now working alongside DMAC, CSRL will continue to provide the same services historically offered, but now with additional capacity for more data collection and data management options. In joining with DMAC, CSRL’s capacity for survey and question design, data collection, and comprehensive data management and analysis is enhanced, fostering innovative research collaborations and improving the quality and impact of research outcomes.
Sabrina Zadrozny, PhD, is an epidemiologist and the director of the Data Management Analysis Core at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). She has 15 years of interdisciplinary research experience working in different capacities with vulnerable women, families, and children during the period between contraception and kindergarten. As an interdisciplinary epidemiologist, Zadrozny focuses on longitudinal research methods, causal inference and reproductive, pediatric and perinatal study design. Her experience designing research studies has sparked a passion in translating complex and innovative epidemiologic methods into practice with an eye toward policy change.
Contact her:
919.360.6303
sabrinaz@unc.edu
DMAC Staff
Jim Peak, Applications Specialist
Joy Yin, Applications Specialist Programmer
Keil Jones, Applications Specialist Programmer
Laura Kuhn, Advanced Research Scientist
Nupur Mishra, Applications Analyst
Ping Chen, Social Science Research Methodologist
Steve Magers, Applications Specialist
Tom Leggett, Applications Analyst
More About Our Cores
