Restructuring SDA for Easier Collaboration in Data Analysis
Charlie Thomas, Jon Stiles · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2011
SDA has been successful in facilitating easy online analysis of survey data for a wide range of users -- researchers, faculty, students, journalists and others. SDA's ability to provide analysis "in the cloud" -- without the need to download data or install statistical software -- has proven very popular. Now we are extending SDA's capabilities in a number of ways for various types of users. For students and other "beginners" we are simplifying the user interface by hiding more advanced options until they are needed. For more advanced users we are: adding new options for complex standard errors, enabling private workspaces where analysts can create recoded and computed variables and selectively share them with collaborators, and providing ways to save and share analysis options so a particular analysis can be easily recreated. And for archivists who are setting up an SDA archive, we are simplifying the installation procedure by consolidating the SDA distribution package into a single Java Web application.