*data upload instruction
Your dataset needs to be in "wide" format and contain the following elements:
- Treatment assignment: 1 - Intervention, 0 - Control
- Time of death: the time of death for patients who die (e.g. 30 for death at 30 days or 18 for death at 18 weeks, etc. Just be sure that the unit of time is the same for all patients). Patients who survive should have the value 99999. If observed patient time of death is close to, or exceeds, 99999, use a higher order unit of time (e.g. convert days to years).
- Functional outcome(s):
- Define a separate column containing the values of the functional outcome at each follow-up. Patients who die prior to the follow-up time OR patients who survived but have missing values at the follow-up are assigned a missing value (defined as "." or "NA"").
- A minimum naming mechanism requires that the outcomes be named in a way that denotes the chronoligical order of the functional outcome(s) preceeded by the letter Y. For example, suppose a study has the functional outcome measured at baseline and at 12-months post randomization. Acceptable names for baseline and final function outcome would be: "Y0" and "Y1" respectively. A more informative naming mechanism is recommended. Suppose that the study measures the functional outcome at baseline and then at 3, 6, and 12-months post randomization, then you could name these variables "Y0", "Y3", "Y6", and "Y12".
- Baseline covariates: Include separate columns corresponding to baseline covariates that are predictive of functional outcome. No naming mechanism is required so long as the names do not conflict with the naming convention established for functional outcomes.
The dataset can be uploaded as a comma, semicolon, tab, or space delimited file.
The first row of the dataset should contain the variable names.
Variables that are character strings may be quoted using single or
double quotes OR have no quotes.'