Visualizing Linked Data Sources for the National Children’s Study (303255)

Keywords: Linked data, interactive visualization

The National Children’s Study Vanguard Study was a pilot for a large-scale epidemiological cohort program of children and their parents. Measures were to be taken from pre-pregnancy until the children reached adulthood. Plans called for the use of extant data (e.g., administrative data, registry data, or external source) to supplement the survey data so as to improve the understanding of rare circumstances, produce small-area estimates, replace or at least reduce data needed from participants, and supply data for which the respondent is not knowledgeable. To help facilitate the understanding of how extant sources relate to Vanguard Study data, NORC constructed a linked-plot interactive visualization. This visualization allows one to explore relationships between key Vanguard Study variables and variables from other extant data sources. The graphics provide insight into the association between aggregated county-level summaries, as well as geospatial correlation.