New ECHILD Resource: How To Guides for Data Management and Analysis

The ECHILD team is excited to introduce a new resource: the ECHILD How To Guides, written by Matt Jay. This is a series of step-by-step guides designed to help researchers effectively extract, manage, and process data within ECHILD.

A Practical Resource for Researchers

These twelve guides walk users through the entire research process, from defining a study cohort to preparing an analysis-ready dataset. Each guide is accompanied by full example scripts in R, making them particularly useful for researchers who may be less experienced with the data management steps required for working with administrative data.

The guides are designed to be self-explanatory and should be read in order, working through the scripts carefully to fully understand their application. While tailored for ECHILD users, researchers outside of ECHILD are also welcome to use and adapt the material for their own projects.

What’s Included?

• The guides cover key topics such as:

• Cohort identification and data extraction

• Demographic and health data management

• Educational outcomes, enrolment, exclusions, and exams

• Linking health and education datasets

• Social care data

• Preparing data for analysis

Users can explore individual modules or follow the full workflow, depending on their research needs. A glossary of key terms is also available to support understanding.

Get Started Today

The ECHILD How To Guides are now available to access via a dedicated website here. We encourage researchers to make use of this resource and adapt the scripts to fit their specific projects.

• Explore the guides here: https://howto.echild.ac.uk/

If you use these materials, please consider citing ECHILD in your work. We hope this resource makes working with administrative data easier and more accessible.