It is not always obvious when data should be numeric, and when character. This affects how information is transfered between programs, and you will need to do some special programming to handle dates. Relational Databases are linked data files which categorize or group information into a set of files. Epi Info is a word processing, database and statistics program for Epidemiologic studies. While there are other database and statistical programs with a wider range of operations, Epi Info occupies less disk space, is readily available, and is relatively easy to learn.
Some investigators use it as their main processing system.
Others use Epi Info for data entry and preliminary processing and then convert their data files to another format, such as SAS for more advanced processing and analysis. Our focus for this course is on use of Epi Info to create a study database, and for data entry. Epi Info 2000 has made significant changes from Epi Info 6.04, the previous version. Epi Info 2000 is designed as a relational database. Depending upon the project needs, these views or tables can be specifically linked by a common field or variable.