The primary purpose of the Data Management and Biostatistics Core (DMBC) is to provide the program structure to integrate and provide consultation on research design, data collection, and data analysis across the various scientific projects and cores in the PPG. To best serve this goal we have established a new, multidisciplinary leadership team for this renewal plan. The data management methods developed during the first 8 years of the PPG have tackled many challenges of data integration, reliability, and access through a comprehensive synthesis of innovative software and proven best practices for data quality, which we propose to further develop during this next phase of the PPG. Also, we have found that similar biostatistical challenges arise repeatedly across even very diverse projects, including highly multivariate longitudinal datasets, and the need for complex modeling of mediation. We have designed our research design and biostatistics support program to provide greater cohesiveness to how PPG researchers approach these problems. In this renewal, we have also expanded our procedures to allow analyses of integrated datasets derived from multiple cores, which will primarily be performed by DMBC personnel. Finally, we propose to engage in proactive coordination of research design across projects and cores in order to ensure that solutions to troublesome statistical issues in one project are immediately disseminated to key personnel in the others, and that Pis of cores and projects maximally benefit from available DBMC resources and from each others' scientific expertise and insights. To this end, our aims are:
AIM 1 : To develop and maintain centralized, integrated data management systems and procedures that ensure the accuracy, availability, and confidentiality of administrative, clinical, and research data from PPG cores and projects.
AIM 2 : To provide high-quality biostatistical consultation to all PPG cores and projects in order to systematically unify and focus research design and statistical analysis.
AIM 3 : To promote research methods integration and collaboration among PPG cores, projects, and related research protocols through efficient data sharing, coordinated data analysis plans, and regular meetings to discuss research process and data interpretation.
To achieve the overarching aims for this PPG renewal plan, i.e., early accurate diagnosis and prediction of FTLD pathology, we must have a comprehensive data system to integrate a wide variety of clinical, behavioral, neuroimaging, and genetic data, and must use sophisticated statistical methods and complex research designs to examine the relationships among the many clinical features of these diseases.
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