Data and Statistics Core

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Core Summary/Abstract The Data & Statistics Core will fulfill an essential need to ensure that the ASPiRE (Advancing Science and Practice in the Retail Environment) Center will achieve its mission to build evidence supporting innovative tobacco control approaches in communities. Critical for carrying out the aims specified by the three projects is the access to curated, integrated, and analyzable data as well as support for study design and data analysis of big and complex data. For example, investigators require access to data on 43,000 retailers in the big cities and 11,539 census tracks and school boundary shape files over time. The specific goals of the Core are therefore to curate and manage geospatial data for characterizing change over time in the built environment for tobacco in the US and 30 Big Cities; to integrate primary and secondary data sources that are shared by research teams across the ASPiRE Center; and to provide geographic information systems (GIS) support and statistical guidance to enhance the research and dissemination aims of the ASPiRE Center. To meet its goals, the Core will employ open-source secure web-based tools such as RECap for housing and integrating shared data, statistical techniques appropriate for the analysis of big and complex geospatial data such as lag regression and generalized linear mixed effects models, and expertise in GIS programming. The Core includes a stellar team with extensive experience in innovative study design, longitudinal modeling, informatics and data integration, geospatial modeling, and programming in GIS software. Importantly, the operation of the Core will rely heavily on the philosophy that Core members should be fully integrated into the research teams of the respective projects as well as in the infrastructural support in order to optimally meet the projects’ data-related needs. To that end, each project as well as the Dissemination & Implementation Core is represented by three key members of the Core. By addressing its aims, the Data & Statistics Core will ensure the success of the scientific goals for ASPiRE by establishing shared data sources for the Research Projects, providing specific expertise on geospatial modeling, designing studies, implementing analyses, and providing principal interpretation for dissemination.