Research Data Guides

Guides

Practical notes for the parts of research-data prep that usually need a second look: participant IDs, repeated timepoints, incomplete responses, reshaping, and local processing.

Research data guideHow to merge longitudinal survey files by participant IDA practical workflow for combining baseline and follow-up files without quietly adding participants or overwriting repeated measurements.Read guide →Research data guideRepeated measurements in Excel or CSV: how to keep each timepointWhen Baseline, Week 4, and Week 8 reuse the same column names, keep the timepoints clear instead of treating every repeated name as a conflict.Read guide →Research data guideParticipant IDs almost match. What should you fix before merging?A conservative way to handle spaces, zero-padding, duplicates, and typo-like IDs without turning every near match into the same participant.Read guide →Research data guideHow to filter incomplete survey responses without deleting the original dataApply a completion rule to the fields that matter, preview the effect, and keep the full merged dataset unchanged.Read guide →Research data guideWide vs. long research data: when should you reshape after merging?A quick way to decide whether repeated measurements should stay in separate columns or become repeated rows.Read guide →Research data guideHow to prepare research data locally without uploading study filesWhat local processing changes when you are working with sensitive study files, and what responsibilities still stay with you.Read guide →