"Data Abstraction and Analysis" for research position?

[OrangeCaramel]

I just saw a research position posting, and it said that student involvement would include "data abstraction and analysis" as well as collecting informed consent for the second part. My question is: Would a student without computer science background be able to do data abstraction? Would I qualify for this? or should I just suck it up and email the PI and ask?

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[Lya]

You should probably ask PI directly, unless the posting includes the eligibilities or preferences or recommended skills or experiences. Since it looks like the clinical research as opposed to bioinformatics, it is possible that you do not have to have a heavy background of CS.

 

[OrangeCaramel]

You should probably ask PI directly, unless the posting includes the eligibilities or preferences or recommended skills or experiences. Since it looks like the clinical research as opposed to bioinformatics, it is possible that you do not have to have a heavy background of CS.

Yes, it is clinical research. So if it's not related to CS, what would data abstraction entail?

 

[Narmerguy]

Yes, it is clinical research. So if it's not related to CS, what would data abstraction entail?

My guess is grunt work.

 

[LizzyM]

Data abstraction might mean reading paper files or perhaps electronic medical records and pulling data from them such as: systolic blood pressure at the visit at which the patient was first prescribed one of these three medications, systolic blood pressure at the subsequent three visits and the date of each of those visits, as well as demographic data, other medications, smoking status, etc.

 

[Shjanzey]

Sounds like you will be pounding information into an excel file

 

[274631]

I'm doing some data abstraction now and it basically involves pulling data from electronic medical records.

The abstraction itself doesn't require any CS background. The analysis part of the job description would be the part you'd need specific skills for. Maybe stats or something?

 

[sat0ri]

sounds like glorified data entry; not bad if you looking for some pay, but not a CV booster (though any experience is better tahn none0

 

[type12]

All of the above are correct. Data abstraction is something everyone does without realizing it. You are abstracting from real world examples a rule. In science education, it usually works the other way; science, however, is all data abstraction.

Example 1: Abstraction: All people who are over 55 are at risk for prostate cancer. Data: Over 90% people we saw over the age of 55 had prostate cancer; Under 55 had lower than 5% chance (making this up.

Example 2: Data: Bob, John, Tim, and Jenny all had colds in the past week... Hmm.... what is the link? What data connects these people? Abstraction: A-ha! Their addresses are very close, maybe there is a cold epidemic breaking out!

The comp sci is just a means to an end, and you can learn it on the job.

 

[masaraksh]

Yes, you can do this without a comp. sci. background. Data abstraction is essentially the same as Data entry. You can record things into an Excel sheet or a pre-formatted form, right?

Analysis is a little different. Sure you can do a lot in Excel but at some point you'll need something more stats oriented (SAS, R, STATA, SPSS, MATLAB, etc). To use those tools and to create valuable analysis you will need some familiarity with the mathematical principles and how to write computer code/scripts to get the analytics you need.