Hello again! I received your draft of the questionnaire, and took the liberty of making some modifications based on my experience in the field. i then had the questionnaires administered to the 15 case-patients. I haven’t received any completed questionnaires yet, but I wanted to send you the revised version so you could do some preparation for when we do get them back.
Once you’ve reviewed the new questionnaire and discussed the changes with colleagues, you will need to make some decisions about how the data from the questionnaire should be categorized and sorted. I have found the line listing to be an invaluable way to compile and organize data from multiple questionnaires and to clarify any patterns that arise in the responses.
I also need you to create an epi curve using the data you were given in the Case-Patient Profiles. This is another way we typically analyze data about an outbreak. We want to do as much as we can now so that when we get the questionnaires back we can start analyzing the new information right away. The sooner we have answers the sooner we can take steps to protect the public from this outbreak. The patient profiles will also be useful in completing some summary statistics in a Descriptive Epi Report, which I need you to create as well.
To recap, your tasks are as follows:
Identify variables for a line listing
Create an epi curve using the existing data
Create a Descriptive Epi Report
Cecilia Young at the NDCC Statistics Group should be contacting you again with additional questions.
