For example, in a study of two treatments, a researcher might put the identification numbers and responses of those on one treatment in the first two columns of a spreadsheet and the identification numbers and responses for the other treatment in the next two columns. This left me having to cut out the third and forth columns, paste them below the first two columns, and add an additional column containing a subject's treatment. This note will provide some guidelines to minimize the work of importing data into standard statistical packages. The standard model for data is a matrix or table of numbers where each row corresponds to an individual subject and each column corresponds to a different variable or measurement. Suppose, for example, we recorded the identification number, age, sex, height, and weight of 10 subjects, The resulting dataset would be composed of 10 rows and 5 columns.
Some newer programs use a different model for repeated measurements of the same individual.
The number of rows is determined by the total number of measurements. Consider a study where 5 weekly blood pressure readings are made on each of 20 subjects. The process of converting a dataset from one format to the other should be straightforward. The details will depend on the package. Most statistical program packages can import data contained in standard spreadsheet and database files.