Statistics, Department of
The R Journal
Date of this Version
12-2009
Document Type
Article
Citation
The R Journal (December 2009) 1(2)
Abstract
Statistical, data manipulation, and presentation tools make R an ideal integrated package for research in the fields of health pol icy and healthcare management and evaluation. However, the technical documentation accompanying most data sets used by researchers in these fields does not include syntax examples for analysts to make the transition from another statistical package to R. This paper describes the steps required to import health policy data into R, to prepare that data for analysis using the two most common complex survey variance calculation techniques, and to produce the principal set of statistical estimates sought by health pol icy researchers. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC), this paper outlines complex survey data analysis techniques in R, with side-by-side comparisons to the SAS, Stata, and SUDAAN statistical software packages.
Comments
Copyright 2009, The R Foundation. Open access material. License: CC BY 3.0 Unported