Re: Software for Epidmiological, Longitudinal Data

AMY wrote:
Hello

We are a team working on a prospective psychological study. The study
design is based on assessing data of three generations of humans over a
long time period, wherein epidemiological as well as biological data
will be assessed. Sample sizes will range from about 100 to several
thousand depending on the research question.

Currently we are looking for an apropriate statistical package. Here
are some features that the software should have:
- strong in the analysis of epidemiological and longitudinal data
- platform independent (should run under different operating systems
like Windows, Mac OS, Unix)
- Ease of use for non-statistic-professionals (i.e. userfriendly GUI)
- High acceptance by scientific journals, by the FDA
- Importance relative to other packages with respect to the number of
users, the number of publications in which the software is used, the
market share etc. (including the recent development of these indices!)


As we had some problems in finding information concerning these items
we would like to ask you where we might find it (if at all) and which
software you would personally recommend and why?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions concerning this!


In my opinion R is the premier statistical and statistical graphics software. It has a learning curve that is worth it. I don't know of software for longitudinal data analysis that is both 1) good and 2) has a good GUI. You'll find a wealth of longitudinal data analysis functions in R. Also take a look at Stata.

Frank Harrell
.