Data management and quality assurance for an International project: the Indo–US Cross-National Dementia Epidemiology Study

✍ Scribed by Rajesh Pandav; Arun Mehta; Steven H. Belle; Deborah E. Martin; Vijay Chandra; Hiroko H. Dodge; Mary Ganguli

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 123 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/gps.650

✦ Synopsis

Background:

Data management and quality assurance play a vital but often neglected role in ensuring high quality research, particularly in collaborative and international studies.

Objective:

A data management and quality assurance program was set up for a cross-national epidemiological study of alzheimer's disease, with centers in india and the united states.

Methods:

The study involved (a) the development of instruments for the assessment of elderly illiterate hindi-speaking individuals; and (b) the use of those instruments to carry out an epidemiological study in a population-based cohort of over 5000 persons. responsibility for data management and quality assurance was shared between the two sites. a cooperative system was instituted for forms and edit development, data entry, checking, transmission, and further checking to ensure that quality data were available for timely analysis. a quality control software program (checks) was written expressly for this project to ensure the highest possible level of data integrity.

Conclusions:

This report addresses issues particularly relevant to data management and quality assurance at developing country sites, and to collaborations between sites in developed and developing countries.