Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28925419›Full record

ArticleMethods of information in medicine2017

mosaicQA - A General Approach to Facilitate Basic Data Quality Assurance for Epidemiological Research.

Martin Bialke, Henriette Rau, Thea Schwaneberg, Rene Walk, Thomas Bahls, Wolfgang Hoffmann

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Methods of information in medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. A method for interoperable knowledge-based data quality assessment.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2021
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Martin BialkeMartin Bialke, Institute for Community Medicine, Section Epidemiology of Health Care and Community Health, University Medicine Greifswald, Ellernholzstr. 1-2, 17487 Greifswald, Germany, E-mail: martin.bialke@uni-greifswald.de.
Henriette Rau
Thea Schwaneberg
Rene Walk
Thomas Bahls
Wolfgang Hoffmann

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundEpidemiological studies are based on a considerable amount of personal, medical and socio-economic data. To answer research questions with reliable results, epidemiological research projects face the challenge of providing high quality data. Consequently, gathered data has to be reviewed continuously during the data collection period.

objectivesThis article describes the development of the mosaicQA-library for non-statistical experts consisting of a set of reusable R functions to provide support for a basic data quality assurance for a wide range of application scenarios in epidemiological research.

methodsTo generate valid quality reports for various scenarios and data sets, a general and flexible development approach was needed. As a first step, a set of quality-related questions, targeting quality aspects on a more general level, was identified. The next step included the design of specific R-scripts to produce proper reports for metric and categorical data. For more flexibility, the third development step focussed on the generalization of the developed R-scripts, e.g. extracting characteristics and parameters. As a last step the generic characteristics of the developed R functionalities and generated reports have been evaluated using different metric and categorical datasets.

resultsThe developed mosaicQA-library generates basic data quality reports for multivariate input data. If needed, more detailed results for single-variable data, including definition of units, variables, descriptions, code lists and categories of qualified missings, can easily be produced.

conclusionsThe mosaicQA-library enables researchers to generate reports for various kinds of metric and categorical data without the need for computational or scripting knowledge. At the moment, the library focusses on the data structure quality and supports the assessment of several quality indicators, including frequency, distribution and plausibility of research variables as well as the occurrence of missing and extreme values. To simplify the installation process, mosaicQA has been released as an official R-package.

Indexed as

Data AccuracyEpidemiologic StudiesHumansSoftwaredata quality assuranceMedical data management

Identifiers

PMID28925419
PMCPMC6292052

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.