A published article with guidance for storing data properly with Microsoft Excel.
What the article offers
This article is a high-quality open-access article which covers the following topics:
- Be consistent
- How to name columns
- How to name files
- How to write dates
- How to record missing values and notes
- How to organize columns, rows, and cells
- How to create a data dictionary
- Avoid common bad practices: calculations and highlighting
- How to backup and save data files
Note: The Biostats4you developers strongly encourage researchers to use a proper database such as REDCap (described elsewhere on this site), but if you must use spreadsheets such as Excel, then this resource will be helpful.
Who it's for
- Clinician researchers
Who created it
This article was written by biostatisticians from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Washington-Seattle. Citation: Karl W. Broman & Kara H. Woo (2018) Data Organization in Spreadsheets,The American Statistician, 72:1, 2-10, DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2017.1375989.